!IEY~\ 
.IERARY    I 
JNIVERSITY  OF     I 
CALIFORNIA^/ 


A  Book  of  Prefaces 


By  H.  L.  MENCKEN 

PREJUDICES:  FIRST  SERIES 
A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

IN  DEFENSE  OF  WOMEN 
A  BOOK  OF  BURLESQUES 
THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  FRIEDRICH  NIETZSCHE 

THE    AMERICAN    LANGUAGE 

[New  edition  in  preparation  for  fall  of  1921  ] 

With  George  Jean  Nathan 

THE  AMERICAN   CREDO 
HELIOGABALUS 

Out  of  Print 

VENTURES    INTO    VERSE 

GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW:   HIS  PLAYS 

THE   ARTIST 

A  LITTLE  BOOK  IN  C  MAJOR 

A   BOOK   OF   CALUMNY 

MEN  VERSUS  THE   MAN 
[With  R.  R.  La  Monte] 

EUROPE  AFTER   8:15 

[With  Mr.  Nathan  and  W.  H.  Wright} 


A    BOOK    OF 
PREFACES 

By      H.      L.       MENCKEN 


PUBLISHED  AT  THE  BORZOI  •  NEW  YORK  •  BY 

ALFRED-A-KNOPF 


COPYRIGHT,  1917,  BY 
ALFRED  A.  KNOPF 

Published  September,  1917 

Second  edition,  1918 
Third  edition,  August,  1920 


LOAN  STACK 


PRINTED    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES    OF   AMERICA 


i 


PREFACE  TO  THE  THIRD  EDITION 

I  am  tempted,  with  a  new  edition  of  these  pref 
aces  going  to  press,  to  make  certain  changes  in 
the  text,  now  three  years  old.  For  one  thing,  each 
of  the  men  here  principally  discussed  has  printed, 
during  those  three  years,  a  number  of  important 
new  works.  From  Conrad  have  come  "The  Ar 
row  of  Gold"  and  "The  Rescue";  from  Dreiser, 
"Free,"  "Twelve  Men"  and  "Hey,  Rub-a-Dub- 
Dub";  from  Huneker,  "Unicorns"  and  "Bed 
ouins."  All  of  these  books  invite  discussion,  par 
ticularly  "The  Rescue,"  "Bedouins"  and  the  two 
last-named  Dreiser  volumes,  the  one  a  quite  re 
markable  collection  of  sketches  and  the  other  an 
infelicitous  but  none  the  less  interesting  attempt 
to  set  forth  the  author's  philosophy.  If  I  were  re 
writing  the  preface  to  Huneker  I'd  undoubtedly  shed 
a  tear  over  the  journalistic  banality  of  parts  of 
"Bedouins"  and  perhaps  have  something  to  say 
about  the  effects  of  Huneker's  election  to  the  Na 
tional  Institute  of  Arts  and  Letters.  If  I  were  re 
turning  to  Conrad  I'd  find  fresh  support  for  some 
of  my  argument  in  both  his  new  books.  If  I  were 


048 


PREFACE 


revising  my  Dreiseriad  I'd  give  a  good  deal  of 
space  to  "Twelve  Men,"  which  deserves  to  rank 
with  "Jennie  Gerhardt"  and  "The  Titan,"  and  per 
haps  even  more  to  "Hey,  Rub-a-Dub-Dub,"  a  fail 
ure  with  touches  of  pathos — a  devastating  exposure 
of  a  first-rate  artist's  limitations. 

But  the  book,  on  the  whole,  would  be  changed 
very  little,  and  so  it  seems  best  to  let  it  stand  as  it 
is.  Re-reading  it,  I  find  a  few  extravagances  that 
give  me  a  start,  but  it  would  be  rather  futile  to  at 
tempt  to  get  rid  of  them,  for  my  extravagances  of 
today  are  probably  quite  as  violent  as  those  of 
three  years  ago.  The  sort  of  criticism  I  detest  and 
try  to  avoid  is  that  which  pretends  to  be  relentlessly 
judicious.  No  such  thing,  of  course,  actually  ex 
ists;  the  most  pontifical  of  professors  is  bound  to 
get  prejudice  into  his  judgments,  and  often  that 
prejudice  is  made  worse  by  the  effort  to  conceal  it. 
I  admire  a  more  frank  manner  in  other  critics,  and 
so  I  try  to  imitate  it  myself.  Here  is  what  I  hon 
estly  thought  in  1917,  and  here,  in  the  main,  is 
what  I  think  today. 

H.  L.  M. 

Baltimore,  September  12,  1920. 


CONTENTS 

I.     Joseph  Conrad  11 
II.     Theodore  Dreiser  67 

III.  James  Huneker  151 

IV.  Puritanism  as  a  Literary  Force  197 
Index  285 


I.    JOSEPH  CONRAD 


A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 


u 


I 

JOSEPH    CONRAD 


"TT  TNDER  all  his  stories  there  ebbs  and 
flows  a  kind  of  tempered  melancholy,  a 
sense  of  seeking  and  not  finding  .  .  ." 
I  take  the  words  from  a  little  book  on  Joseph  Con 
rad  by  Wilson  Follett,  privately  printed,  and  now, 
I  believe,  out  of  print.1  They  define  both  the  mood 
of  the  stories  as  works  of  art  and  their  burden  and 
direction  as  criticisms  of  life.  Like  Dreiser,  Con 
rad  is  forever  fascinated  by  the  "immense  indiffer 
ence  of  things,"  the  tragic  vanity  of  the  blind  grop 
ing  that  we  call  aspiration,  the  profound  meaning- 
lessness  of  life — fascinated,  and  left  wondering. 
One  looks  in  vain  for  an  attempt  at  a  solution  of 

i  Joseph  Conrad:  A  short  study  of  his  intellectual  and  emo 
tional  attitude  toward  his  work  and  of  the  chief  characteris 
tics  of  his  novels,  by  Wilson  Follett;  New  York,  Doubleday, 
Page  &  Co.  (1915). 

11 


12  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

the  riddle  in  the  whole  canon  of  his  work.  Dreiser, 
more  than  once,  seems  ready  to  take  refuge  behind 
an  indeterminate  sort  of  mysticism,  even  a  facile 
supernaturalism,  but  Conrad,  from  first  to  last, 
faces  squarely  the  massive  and  intolerable  fact. 
His  stories  are  not  chronicles  of  men  who  conquer 
fate,  nor  of  men  who  are  unbent  and  undaunted 
by  fate,  but  of  men  who  are  conquered  and  undone. 
Each  protagonist  is  a  new  Prometheus,  with  a 
sardonic  ignominy  piled  upon  his  helplessness. 
Each  goes  down  a  Greek  route  to  defeat  and  dis 
aster,  leaving  nothing  behind  him  save  an  unan 
swered  question.  I  can  scarcely  recall  an  excep 
tion.  Kurtz,  Lord  Jim,  Razumov,  Nostromo, 
Captain  Whalley,  Yanko  Goorall,  Verloc,  Heyst, 
Caspar  Ruiz,  Almayer:  one  and  all  they  are  de 
stroyed  and  made  a  mock  of  by  the  blind,  in 
comprehensible  forces  that  beset  them. 

Even  in  "Youth,"  "Typhoon,"  and  "The 
Shadow  Line,"  superficially  stories  of  the  indomi 
table,  that  same  consuming  melancholy,  that  same 
pressing  sense  of  the  irresistible  and  inexplicable, 
is  always  just  beneath  the  surface.  Captain  Mac 
Whirr  gets  the  Nan-Shan' to  port  at  last,  but  it  is  a 
victory  that  stands  quite  outside  the  man  himself; 
he  is  no  more  than  a  marker  in  the  unfathomable 
game;  the  elemental  forces,  fighting  one  another, 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  13 

almost  disregard  him;  the  view  of  him  that  we  get 
is  one  of  disdain,  almost  one  of  contempt.  So, 
too,  in  "Youth."  A  tale  of  the  spirit's  triumph, 
of  youth  besting  destiny?  I  do  not  see  it  so.  To 
me  its  significance,  like  that  of  "The  Shadow  Line," 
is  all  subjective;  it  is  an  aging  man's  elegy 
upon  the  hope  and  high  resolution  that  the 
years  have  blown  away,  a  sentimental  rem 
iniscence  of  what  the  enigmatical  gods  have 
had  their  jest  with,  leaving  only  its  gallant  mem 
ory  behind.  The  whole  Conradean  system  sums 
itself  up  in  the  title  of  "Victory,"  an  incomparable 
piece  of  irony.  Imagine  a  better  label  for  that 
tragic  record  of  heroic  and  yet  bootless  effort,  that 
matchless  picture,  in  microcosm^  of  the  relent 
lessly  cruel  revolutions  in  the  macrocosm^ 

Mr.  Follett,  perhaps  with  too  much  critical  fa 
cility,  finds  the  cause  of  Conrad's  unyielding  pes 
simism  in  the  circumstances  of  his  own  life — his 
double  exile,  first  from  Poland,  and  then  from  the 
sea.  But  this  is  surely  stretching  the  facts  to  fit 
an  hypothesis.  Neither  exile,  it  must  be  plain, 
was  enforced,  nor  is  either  irrevocable.  Conrad 
has  been  back  to  Poland,  and  he  is  free  to  return 
to  the  ships  whenever  the  spirit  moves  him.  I  see 
no  reason  for  looking  in  such  directions  for  his 
view  of  the  world,  nor  even  in  the  direction  of  his 


14  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

nationality.  We  detect  certain  curious  qualities  in 
every  Slav  simply  because  he  is  more  given  than 
we  are  to  revealing  the  qualities  that  are  in  all 
of  us.  Introspection  and  self-revelation  are  his 
habit;  he  carries  the  study  of  man  and  fate  to  a 
point  that  seems  morbid  to  westerners;  he  is  for 
ever  gabbling  about  what  he  finds  in  his  own  soul. 
But  in  the  last  analysis  his  verdicts  are  the  imme 
morial  and  almost  universal  ones.  Surely  his  res- 
ignationism  is  not  a  Slavic  copyright;  all  human 
philosophies  and  religions  seem  doomed  to  come 
to  it  at  last.  Once  it  takes  shape  as  the  concept 
of  Nirvana,  the  desire  for  nothingness,  the  will 
to  not-will.  Again,  it  is  fatalism  in  this  form  or 
that — Mohammedanism,  Agnosticism  .  .  .  Cal 
vinism!  Yet  again,  it  is  the  "Out,  out,  brief  can 
dle!"  of  Shakespeare,  the  "Eheu  fugaces"  of  Hor 
ace,  the  "Vanitas  vanitatum;  omnia  vanitas!"  of 
the  Preacher.  Or,  to  make  an  end,  it  is  millen- 
irianism,  the  theory  that  the  world  is  going  to 
blow  up  tomorrow,  or  the  day  after,  or  two  weeks 
hence,  and  that  all  sweating  and  striving  are  thus 
useless.  Search  where  you  will,  near  or  far,  in 
ancient  or  modern  times,  and  you  will  never  find 
a  first-rate  race  or  an  enlightened  age,  in  its  mo 
ments  of  highest  reflection,  that  ever  gave  more 
>than  a  passing  bow  to  optimism.  Even  Christian- 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  15 

ity,  starting  out  as  "glad  tidings,"  has  had  to  take 
on  protective  coloration  to  survive,  and  today  its 
chief  professors  moan  and  blubber  like  Johann  in 
Herod's  rain-barrel.  The  sanctified  are  few  and 
far  between.  The  vast  majority  of  us  must  suffer 
in  hell,  just  as  we  suffer  on  earth.  The  divine 
grace,  so  omnipotent  to  save,  is  withheld  from  us. 
Why?  There,  alas,  is  your  insoluble  mystery, 
your  riddle  of  the  universe!  .  .  . 

This  conviction  that  human  life  is  a  seeking 
without  a  finding,  that  its  purpose  is  impenetrable, 
that  joy  and  sorrow  are  alike  meaningless,  you  will 
see  written  largely  in  the  work  of  most  great  cre 
ative  artists.  It  is  obviously  the  final  message,  if 
any  message  is  genuinely  to  be  found  there,  of  the 
nine  symphonies  of  Ludwig  van  Beethoven,  or,  at 
any  rate,  of  the  three  which  show  any  intellectual 
content  at  all.  Mark  Twain,  superficially  a  hu 
mourist  and  hence  an  optimist,  was  haunted  by  it  in 
secret,  as  Nietzsche  was  by  the  idea  of  eternal  re 
currence  :  it  forced  itself  through  his  guard  in  "The 
Mysterious  Stranger"  and  "What  is  Man?"  In 
Shakespeare,  as  Shaw  has  demonstrated,  it  amounts 
to  a  veritable  obsession.  And  what  else  is  there 
in  Balzac,  Goethe,  Swift,  Moliere,  Turgenev,  Ibsen, 
Dostoyevsky,  Remain  Holland,  Anatole  France? 
Or  in  the  Zola  of  "L'Assomoir,"  "Germinal,"  "La 


16  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

Debacle,"  the  whole  Rougon-Macquart  series? 
(The  Zola  of  "Les  Quatres  Evangiles,"  and  par 
ticularly  of  "Fecondite,"  turned  meliorist  and 
idealist,  and  became  ludicrous.)  Or  in  the  Haupt- 
mann  of  "Fuhrmann  Henschel,"  or  in  Hardy,  or  in 
Sudermann?  (I  mean,  of  course,  Sudermann  the 
novelist.  Sudermann  the  dramatist  is  a  mere 
mechanician.)  .  .  .  The  younger  men  in  all  coun 
tries,  in  so  far  as  they  challenge  the  current  sen 
timentality  at  all,  seem  to  move  irresistibly  toward 
the  same  disdainful  skepticism.  Consider  the  last 
words  of  "Riders  to  the  Sea."  Or  Gorky's  "Nacht- 
asyl."  Or  Frank  Norris'  "McTeague."  Or  Ste 
phen  Crane's  "The  Blue  Hotel."  Or  the  ironical 
fables  of  Dunsany.  Or  Dreiser's  "Jennie  Ger- 
hardt."  Or  George  Moore's  "Sister  Teresa." 

Conrad,  more  than  any  of  the  other  men  I  have 
mentioned,  grounds  his  work  firmly  upon  this  sense 
of  cosmic  implacability,  this  confession  of  unin- 
telligibility.  The  exact  point  of  the  story  of  Kurtz, 
in  "Heart  of  Darkness,"  is  that  it  is  pointless,  that 
Kurtz's  death  is  as  meaningless  as  his  life,  that 
the  moral  of  such  a  sordid  tragedy  is  a  wholesale 
negation  of  all  morals.  And  this,  no  less,  is  the 
point  of  the  story  of  Falk,  and  of  that  of  Almayer, 
and  of  that  of  Jim.  Mr.  Follett  (he  must  be  a  for 
ward-looker  in  his  heart!)  finds  himself,  in  the 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  17 

end,  unable  to  accept  so  profound  a  determinism 
unadulterated,  and  so  he  injects  a  gratuitous  and 
mythical  romanticism  into  it,  and  hymns  Conrad 
"as  a  comrade,  one  of  a  company  gathered  under 
the  ensign  of  hope  for  common  war  on  despair." 
With  even  greater  error,  William  Lyon  Phelps  ar 
gues  that  his  books  "are  based  on  the  axiom  of  the 
moral  law."  1  The  one  notion  is  as  unsound  as 
the  other.  Conrad  makes  war  on  nothing;  he  is 
pre-eminently  not  a  moralist.  He  swings,  indeed, 
as  far  from  revolt  and  moralizing  as  is  possible, 
for  he  does  not  even  criticize  God.  His  undoubted 
comradeship,  his  plain  kindliness  toward  the  soul 
he  vivisects,  is  not  the  fruit  of  moral  certainty, 
but  of  moral  agnosticism.  He  neither  protests 
nor  punishes;  he  merely  smiles  and  pities.  Like 
Mark  Twain  he  might  well  say:  "The  more  I  see 
of  men,  the  more  they  amuse  me — and  the  more  I 
pity  them."  He  is  simpatico  precisely  because  of 
this  ironical  commiseration,  this  infinite  disillu 
sionment,  this  sharp  understanding  of  the  narrow 
limits  of  human  volition  and  responsibility  ...  I 
have  said  that  he  does  not  criticize  God.  One  may 
even  imagine  him  pitying  God  .  .  . 

iThe   Advance   of   the    English   Novel.    New  York,  Dodd, 
Mead  &  Co.,  1916,  p.  215. 


18  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 


§2 

But  in  this  pity,  I  need  not  add,  there  is  no  touch 
of  sentimentality.  No  man  could  be  less  the  ro 
mantic,  blubbering  over  the  sorrows  of  his  own 
Werthers.  No  novelist  could  have  smaller  like 
ness  to  the  brummagem  emotion-squeezers  of  the 
Kipling  type,  with  their  playhouse  fustian  and 
their  naive  ethical  cocksureness.  The  thing  that 
sets  off  Conrad  from  these  facile  fellows,  and  from 
the  shallow  pseudo-realists  who  so  often  coalesce 
with  them  and  become  indistinguishable  from 
them,  is  precisely  his  quality  of  irony,  and  that 
irony  is  no  more  than  a  proof  of  the  greater  ma 
turity  of  his  personal  culture,  his  essential  supe 
riority  as  a  civilized  man.  It  is  the  old  difference 
between  a  Huxley  and  a  Gladstone,  a  philosophy 
that  is  profound  and  a  philosophy  that  is  merely 
comfortable,  "Quid  est  veritas?"  and  "Thus  saith 
the  Lord!"  He  brings  into  the  English  fiction  of 
the  day,  not  only  an  artistry  that  is  vastly  more 
fluent  and  delicate  than  the  general,  but  also  a 
highly  unusual  sophistication,  a  quite  extraordi 
nary  detachment  from  all  petty  rages  and  puerile 
certainties.  The  winds  of  doctrine,  howling  all 
about  him,  leave  him  absolutely  unmoved.  He 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  19 

belongs  to  no  party  and  has  nothing  to  teach,  save 
only  a  mystery  as  old  as  man.  In  the  midst  of  die 
hysterical  splutterings  and  battle-cries  of  the  Kip- 
lings  and  Chestertons,  the  booming  pedagogics  of 
the  Wellses  and  Shaws,  and  the  smirking  at  key 
holes  of  the  Bennetts  and  de  Morgans,  he  stands 
apart  and  almost  alone,  observing  the  sardonic 
comedy  of  man  with  an  eye  that  sees  every  point 
and  significance  of  it,  but  vouchsafing  none  of  that 
sophomoric  indignation,  that  Hyde  Park  wisdom, 
that  flabby  moralizing  which  freight  and  swamp 
the  modern  English  novel.  "At  the  centre  of  his 
web,"  says  Arthur  Symons,  "sits  an  elemental  sar 
casm  discussing  human  affairs  with  a  calm  and 
cynical  ferocity  ...  He  calls  up  all  the  dreams 
and  illusions  by  which  men  have  been  destroyed 
and  saved,  and  lays  them  mockingly  naked  .  .  . 
He  shows  the  bare  side  of  every  virtue,  the  hidden 
heroism  of  every  vice  and  crime.  He  summons 
before  him  all  the  injustices  that  have  come  to  birth 
out  of  ignorance  and  self-love  .  .  .  And  in  all  this 
there  is  no  judgment,  only  an  implacable  compre 
hension,  as  of  one  outside  nature,  to  whom  joy 
and  sorrow,  right  and  wrong,  savagery  and  civili 
zation,  are  equal  and  indifferent  .  .  ." 

Obviously,  no  Englishman!     No  need  to  explain 

i  Conrad,  in  the  Forum,  May,  1915. 


20  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

(with  something  akin  to  apology)  that  his  name 
is  really  not  Joseph  Conrad  at  all,  but  Teodor 
Josef  Konrad  Karzeniowski,  and  that  he  is  a  Pole 
of  noble  lineage,  with  a  vague  touch  of  the  Asiatic 
in  him.  The  Anglo-Saxon  mind,  in  these  later 
days,  becomes  increasingly  incapable  of  his  whole 
point  of  view.  Put  into  plain  language,  his  doc 
trine  can  only  fill  it  with  wonder  and  fury.  That 
mind  is  essentially  moral  in  cut;  it  is  believing, 
certain,  indignant;  it  is  as  incapable  of  skepticism, 
save  as  a  passing  coryza  of  the  spirit,  as  it  is  of  wit, 
which  is  skepticism's  daughter.  Time  was  when 
this  was  not  true,  as  Congreve,  Pope,  Wycherley 
and  even  Thackeray  show,  but  that  time  was  be 
fore  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832,  the  great  intellectual 
levelling,  the  emancipation  of  the  chandala.  In 
these  our  days  the  Englishman  is  an  incurable  foe 
of  distinction,  and  being  so  he  must  needs  take  in 
with  his  mother's  milk  the  delusions  which  go 
with  that  enmity,  and  particularly  the  master  de 
lusion  that  all  human  problems,  in  the  last  anal 
ysis,  are  readily  soluble,  and  that  all  that  is  re 
quired  for  their  solution  is  to  take  counsel  freely, 
to  listen  to  wizards,  to  count  votes,  to  agree  upon 
legislation.  This  is  the  prime  and  immovable  doc 
trine  of  the  mobile  vulgus  set  free ;  it  is  the  loveli 
est  of  all  the  fruits  of  its  defective  powers  of  obser- 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  21 

vation  and  reasoning,  and  above  all,  of  its  defective 
knowledge  of  demonstrated  facts,  especially  in 
4ory.  Take  away  this  notion  that  there  is  some 
mysterious  infallibility  in  the  sense  of  the  major 
ity,  this  theory  that  the  consensus  of  opinion  is 
inspired,  and  the  idea  of  equality  begins  to  wither; 
in  fact,  it  ceases  to  have  any  intelligibility  at  all. 
But  the  notion  is  not  taken  away;  it  is  nourished; 
it  flourishes  on  its  own  effluvia.  And  out  of  it 
spring  the  two  rules  which  give  direction  to  all 
popular  thinking,  the  first  being  that  no  concept 
in  politics  or  conduct  is  valid  (or  more  accurately 
respectable),  which  rises  above  the  comprehension 
of  the  great  masses  of  men,  or  which  violates  any 
of  their  inherent  prejudices  or  superstitions,  and 
the  second  being  that  the  articulate  individual  in 
the  mob  takes  on  some  of  the  authority  and  inspira 
tion  of  the  mob  itself,  and  that  he  is  thus  free  to 
set  himself  up  as  a  soothsayer,  so  long  as  he  does 
not  venture  beyond  the  aforesaid  bounds — in  brief,  m 
that  one  man's  opinion,  provided  it  observe  they 
current  decorum,  is  as  good  as  any  other  man's. 

Practically,  of  course,  this  is  simply  an  invita 
tion  to  quackery.  I  The  man  of  genuine  ideas  is 
hedged  in  by  taboos;  the  quack  finds  an  audience 
already  agape.  The  reply  to  the  invitation,  in  the 
domain  of  applied  ethics,  is  the  revived  and  rein- 


22  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

forced  Sklavenmoral  that  besets  all  of  us  of  English 
speech — the  huggermugger  morality  of  timorous, 
whining,  unintelligent  and  unimaginative  men — f 
envy  turned  into  law,  cowardice  sanctified,  stupid 
ity  made  noble,  Puritanism.  And  in  the  theoret 
ical  field  there  is  an  even  more  luxuriant  crop  of 
bosh.  \Mountebanks  almost  innumerable  tell  us 
what  we  should  believe  and  practice,  in  politics, 
religion,  philosophy  and  the  arts.  England  and 
the  United  States,  between  them,  house  more  creeds 
than  all  the  rest  of  the  world  together,  and  they 
are  more  absurd.  They  rise,  they  flame,  they  fall 
and  go  out,  but  always  there  are  new  ones,  always 
the  latest  is  worse  than  the  last.  What  modern 
civilization  save  this  of  ours  could  have  pro 
duced  Christian  Science,  or  the  New  Thought,  or 
Billy  Sunday  ism?  What  other  could  have  yielded 
up  the  mawkish  bumptiousness  of  the  Uplift? 
What  other  could  accept  gravely  the  astounding 
imbecilities  of  English  philanthropy  and  American 
law?  The  native  output  of  fallacy  and  sentimen 
tality,  in  fact,  is  not  enough  to  satisfy  the  stupen 
dous  craving  of  the  mob  unleashed;  there  must 
needs  be  a  constant  importation  of  the  aberrant 
fancies  of  other  peoples.  Let  a  new  messiah  leap 
up  with  a  new  message  in  any  part  of  the  world, 
and  at  once  there  is  a  response  from  the  two  great 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  23 

free  nations.  Once  it  was  Tolstoi  with  a  mouldy 
asceticism  made  of  catacomb  Christianity  and  se- 
•  nile  soul-sickness;  again  it  was  Bergson,  with  a 
perfumed  quasi-philosophy  for  the  boudoirs  of  the 
faubourgs;  yet  again  came  Rudolf  Eucken  and 
Pastor  Wagner,  with  their  middle-class  beeriness 
and  banality.  The  list  need  go  no  further.  It 
begins  with  preposterous  Indian  swamis  and  yog- 
his  (most  of  them,  to  do  them  justice,  diligent  Jews 
from  Grand  street  or  the  bagnios  of  Constantino 
ple),  and  it  ends  with  the  fabulous  Ibsen  of  the 
symbols  (no  more  the  real  Ibsen  than  Christ  was  a 
prohibitionist),  the  Ellen  Key  of  the  new  gyneola- 
try  and  the  Signorina  Montessori  of  the  magical 
Method.  It  was  a  sure  instinct  that  brought  Eu- 
sapia  Palladino  to  New  York.  It  was  the  same 
sure  instinct  that  brought  Hall  Caine. 

I  have  mentioned  Ibsen.  A  glance  at  the  litera 
ture  he  has  spawned  in  the  vulgate  is  enough  to 
show  how  much  his  falser  aspects  have  intrigued 
the  American  mind  and  how  little  it  has  reacted  to 
his  shining  skill  as  a  dramatic  craftsman — his  one 
authentic  claim  upon  fame.  Read  Jennette  Lee's 
"The  Ibsen  Secret,"  *  perhaps  the  most  successful 
of  all  the  Ibsen  gemaras  in  English,  if  you  would 
know  the  virulence  of  the  national  appetite  for 

iNew  York  and  London.    G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  1907. 


24  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

bogus  revelation.  And  so  in  all  the  arts.  What 
ever  is  profound  and  penetrating  we  stand  off 
from;  whatever  is  facile  and  shallow,  particularly 
if  it  reveal  a  moral  or  mystical  color,  we  embrace. 
Ibsen  the  first-rate  dramatist  was  rejected  with  in 
dignation  precisely  because  of  his  merits — his 
sharp  observation,  his  sardonic  realism,  his  unsen 
timental  logic.  But  the  moment  a  meretricious 
and  platitudinous  ethical  purpose  began  to  be  read 
into  him — how  he  protested  against  it! — he  was 
straightway  adopted  into  our  flabby  culture.  Com 
pare  Hauptmann  and  Brieux,  the  one  a  great  artist, 
the  other  no  more  than  a  raucous  journalist. 
Brieux's  elaborate  proofs  that  two  and  two  are  four 
have  been  hailed  as  epoch-making;  one  of  his  worst 
plays,  indeed,  has  been  presented  with  all  the  sol 
emn  hocus-pocus  of  a  religious  rite.  But  Haupt 
mann  remains  almost  unknown;  even  the  Nobel 
Prize  did  not  give  him  a  vogue.  Run  the  roll: 
Maeterlinck  and  his  languishing  supernaturalism, 
Tagore  and  his  Asiatic  wind  music,  Selma  Lagerlof 
and  her  old  maid's  mooniness,  Bernstein,  Molnar 
and  company  and  their  out-worn  tricks — but  I  pile 
up  no  more  names.  Consider  one  fact:  the  civili 
zation  that  kissed  Maeterlinck  on  both  cheeks,  and 
Tagore  perhaps  even  more  intimately,  has  yet  to 
shake  hands  with  Anatole  France.  .  .  . 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  25 

This  bemusement  by  superficial  ideas,  this  neck- 
bending  to  quacks,  this  endless  appetite  for  sesames 
and  apocalypses,  is  depressingly  visible  in  our  na 
tive  literature,  as  it  is  in  our  native  theology,  phil 
osophy  and  politics.  "The  British  and  American 
mind,"  says  W.  L.  George,1  "has  been  long  honey 
combed  with  moral  impulse,  at  any  rate  since  the 
Reformation;  it  is  very  much  what  the  German 
mind  was  up  to  the  middle  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen 
tury."  The  artist,  facing  an  audience  which  seems 
incapable  of  differentiating  between  aesthetic  and 
ethical  values,  tends  to  become  a  preacher  of  son 
orous  nothings,  and  the  actual  moralist-propagan 
dist  finds  his  way  into  art  well  greased.  No  other 
people  in  Christendom  produces  so  vast  a  crop  of 
tin-horn  haruspices.  We  have  so  many  Orison 
Swett  Mardens,  Martin  Tuppers,  Edwin  Markhams, 
Gerald  Stanley  Lees,  Dr.  Frank  Cranes  and  Dr.  Syl- 
vanus  Stalls  that  their  output  is  enough  to  supply 
the  whole  planet.  We  see,  too,  constantly,  how 
thin  is  the  barrier  separating  the  chief  Anglo- 
Saxon  novelists  and  playwrights  from  the  pasture 
of  the  platitudinarian.  Jones  and  Pinero  both 
made  their  first  strikes,  not  as  the  artists  they  un 
doubtedly  are,  but  as  pinchbeck  moralists,  moan- 

i  The  Intelligence  of  Woman.    Boston,  Little,  Brown  &  Co., 
1916,  p.  6-7. 


26  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

ing  over  the  sad  fact  that  girls  are  seduced. 
Shaw,  a  highly  dexterous  dramaturgist,  smothers 
his  dramaturgy  in  a  pifflish  iconoclasm  that  is  no 
more  than  a  disguise  for  Puritanism.  Bennett  and 
Wells,  competent  novelists,  turn  easily  from  the 
novel  to  the  volume  of  shoddy  philosophizing. 
Kipling,  with  "Kim"  behind  him,  becomes  a  vo 
ciferous  leader-writer  of  the  Daily  Mail  school, 
whooping  a  pothouse  patriotism,  hurling  hysterical 
objurgations  at  the  foe.  Even  W.  L.  George,  po 
tentially  a  novelist  of  sound  consideration,  drops 
his  craft  for  the  jehad  of  the  suffragettes.  Doyle, 
Barrie,  Caine,  Locke,  Barker,  Mrs.  Ward,  Beres- 
ford,  Hewlett,  Watson,  Quiller-Couch — one  and 
all,  high  and  low,  they  are  tempted  by  the  public 
demand  for  sophistry,  the  ready  market  for  pills. 
A  Henry  Bordeaux,  in  France,  is  an  exception;  in 
England  he  is  the  rule.  The  endless  thirst  to  be 
soothed  with  cocksure  asseverations,  the  great  mob 
yearning  to  be  dosed  and  comforted,  is  the  undo 
ing,  over  there,  of  three  imaginative  talents  out 
of  five. 

And,  in  America,  of  nearly  five  out  of  five. 
Winston  Churchill  may  serve  as  an  example.  He 
is  a  literary  workman  of  very  decent  skill;  the  na 
tive  critics  speak  of  him  with  invariable  respect; 
his  standing  within  the  craft  was  shown  when  he 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  27 

was  unanimously  chosen  first  president  of  the  Auth 
ors'  League  of  America.  Examine  his  books  in 
order.  They  proceed  steadily  from  studies  of 
human  character  and  destiny,  the  proper  business 
of  the  novelist,  to  mere  outpourings  of  social  and 
economic  panaceas,  the  proper  business  of  leader 
writers,  chautauquas  rabble-rousers  and  hedge  poli 
ticians.  "The  Celebrity"  and  "Richard  Carvel," 
within  their  limits,  are  works  of  art;  "The  Inside 
of  the  Cup"  is  no  more  than  a  compendium  of 
paralogy,  as  silly  and  smattering  as  a  speech  by 
William  Jennings  Bryan  or  a  shocker  by  Jane  Ad- 
dams.  Churchill,  with  the  late  Jack  London  to 
bear  him  company,  may  stand  for  a  large  class; 
in  its  lower  ranks  are  such  men  as  Reginald  Wright 
Kauffman  and  Will  Levington  Comfort.  Still 
more  typical  of  the  national  taste  for  moral  pur 
pose  and  quack  philosophy  are  the  professional 
optimists  and  eye-dimmers,  with  their  two  grand 
divisions,  the  boarding-school  romantics  and  the 
Christian  Endeavor  Society  sentimentalists.  Of 
the  former  I  give  you  George  Barr  McCutcheon, 
Owen  Wister,  the  late  Richard  Harding  Davis,  and 
%.  horde  of  women — most  of  them  now  humanely 
translated  to  the  moving  pictures.  Of  the  latter  I 
give  you  the  fair  authors  of  the  "glad"  books,  so 
gigantically  popular,  so  lavishly  praised  in  the 


28  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

newspapers — with  the  wraith  of  the  later  Howells, 
the  virtuous,  kittenish  Howells,  floating  about  in 
the  air  above  them.  No  other  country  can  parallel 
this  literature,  either  in  its  copiousness  or  in  its 
banality.  It  is  native  and  peculiar  to  a  civiliza 
tion  which  erects  the  unshakable  certainties  of  the 
misinformed  and  quack-ridden  into  a  national  way 
of  life.  .  .  . 

§3 

My  business,  however,  is  not  with  the  culture  of 
Anglo-Saxondom,  but  only  with  Conrad's  place 
therein.  That  place  is  isolated  and  remote;  he  is 
neither  of  it  nor  quite  in  it.  In  the  midst  of  a 
futile  meliorism  which  deceives  the  more,  the  more 
it  soothes,  he  stands  out  like  some  sinister  skele 
ton  at  the  feast,  regarding  the  festivities  with  a 
flickering  and  impenetrable  grin.  "To  read  him," 
says  Arthur  Symons,  "is  to  shudder  on  the  edge  of 
a  gulf,  in  a  silent  darkness."  There  is  no  need 
to  be  told  that  he  is  there  almost  by  accident,  that 
he  came  in  a  chance  passerby,  a  bit  uncertain  of 
the  door.  It  was  not  an  artistic  choice  that  mad* 
him  write  English  instead  of  French;  it  was  a 
choice  with  its  roots  in  considerations  far  afield. 
But  once  made,  it  concerned  him  no  further.  In 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  29 

his  first  book  he  was  plainly  a  stranger,  and  all 
himself;  in  his  last  he  is  a  stranger  still — strange 
in  his  manner  of  speech,  strange  in  his  view  of  life, 
strange,  above  all,  in  his  glowing  and  gorgeous 
artistry,  his  enthusiasm  for  beauty  per  se,  his  ab 
solute  detachment  from  that  heresy  which  would 
make  it  no  more  than  a  servant  to  some  bald  and  de 
pressing  theory  of  conduct,  some  axiom  of  the  un 
comprehending.  He  is,  like  Dunsany,  a  pure  art 
ist.  His  work,  as  he  once  explained,  is  not  to 
edify,  to  console,  to  improve  or  to  encourage,  but 
simply  to  get  upon  paper  some  shadow  of  his  own 
eager  sense  of  the  wonder  and  prodigality  of  life 
as  men  live  it  in  the  world,  and  of  its  unfathom 
able  romance  and  mystery.  "My  task,"  he  went 
on,  "is,  by  the  power  of  the  written  word,  to  make 
you  hear,  to  make  you  feel — it  is,  before  all,  to 
make  you  see.  That — and  no  more,  and  it  is 
everything."  .  .  .* 

This  detachment  from  all  infra-and-ultra-artistic 
purpose,  this  repudiation  of  the  role  of  propa 
gandist,  this  avowal  of  what  Nietzsche  was  fond 
of  calling  innocence,  explains  the  failure  of  Con 
rad  to  fit  into  the  pigeon-holes  so  laboriously  pre 
pared  for  him  by  critics  who  must  shelve  and 
label  or  be  damned.  He  is  too  big  for  any  of 

i  In  The  New  Review,  Dec.,  1897. 


30  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

them,  and  of  a  shape  too  strange.  He  stands 
clear,  not  only  of  all  the  schools  and  factions  that 
obtain  in  latter-day  English  fiction,  but  also  of 
the  whole  stream  of  English  literature  since  the 
Restoration.  He  is  as  isolated  a  figure  as  George 
Moore,  and  for  much  the  same  reason.  Both  are 
exotics,  and  both,  in  a  very  real  sense,  are  public 
enemies,  for  both  war  upon  the  philosophies  that 
caress  the  herd.  Is  Conrad  the  beyond-Kipling,  as 
the  early  criticism  of  him  sought  to  make  him? 
Nonsense!  As  well  speak  of  Mark  Twain  as  the 
beyond-Petroleum  V.  Nasby  (as,  indeed,  was  ac 
tually  done).  He  is  not  only  a  finer  artist  than 
Kipling;  he  is  a  quite  different  kind  of  artist. 
Kipling,  within  his  limits,  shows  a  talent  of  a 
very  high  order.  He  is  a  craftsman  of  the  utmost 
deftness.  He  gets  his  effects  with  almost  perfect 
assurance.  Moreover,  there  is  a  poet  in  him;  he 
knows  how  to  reach  the  emotions.  But  once  his 
stories  are  stripped  down  to  the  bare  carcass  their 
emptiness  becomes  immediately  apparent.  The 
ideas  in  them  are  not  the  ideas  of  a  reflective  and 
perspicacious  man,  but  simply  the  ideas  of  a  mob- 
orator,  a  mouther  of  inanities,  a  bugler,  a  school 
girl.  Reduce  any  of  them  to  a  simple  proposition, 
and  that  proposition,  in  so  far  as  it  is  intelligible 
at  all,  will  be  ridiculous.  It  is  precisely  here  that 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  31 

Conrad  leaps  immeasurably  ahead.  His  ideas  are 
not  only  sound ;  they  are  acute  and  unusual.  They 
plough  down  into  the  sub-strata  of  human  motive 
and  act.  They  unearth  conditions  and  considera 
tions  that  lie  concealed  from  the  superficial  glance. 
They  get  at  the  primary  reactions.  In  particular 
and  above  all,  they  combat  the  conception  of  man 
as  a  pet  and  privy  councillor  of  the  gods,  working 
out  his  own  destiny  in  a  sort  of  vacuum  and  con 
stantly  illumined  by  infallible  revelations  of  his 
duty,  and  expose  him  as  he  is  in  fact:  an  organ 
ism  infinitely  more  sensitive  and  responsive  than 
other  organisms,  but  still  a  mere  organism  in  the 
end,  a  brother  to  the  wild  things  and  the  protozoa, 
swayed  by  the  same  inscrutable  fortunes,  con 
demned  to  the  same  inchoate  errors  and  irresolu 
tions,  and  surrounded  by  the  same  terror  and  dark 
ness  .  .  . 

But  is  the  Conrad  I  here  describe  simply  a  new 
variety  of  moralist,  differing  from  the  general  only 
in  the  drift  of  the  doctrine  he  preaches?  Surely 
not.  He  is  no  more  a  moralist  than  an  atheist  is 
a  theologian.  His  attitude  toward  all  moral  sys 
tems  and  axioms  is  that  of  a  skeptic  who  rejects 
them  unanimously,  even  including,  and  perhaps 
especially  including,  those  to  which,  in  moments 
of  aesthetic  detachment,  he  seems  to  give  a  formal 


32 A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

and  resigned  sort  of  assent.  It  is  this  constant 
falling  back  upon  "I  do  not  know,"  this  incessant 
conversion  of  the  easy  logic  of  romance  into  the 
harsh  and  dismaying  logic  of  fact,  that  explains 
his  failure  to  succeed  as  a  popular  novelist,  despite 
his  skill  at  evoking  emotion,  his  towering  artistic 
passion,  his  power  to  tell  a  thumping  tale.  He  is 
talked  of,  he  brings  forth  a  mass  of  punditic  criti 
cism,  he  becomes  in  a  sense  the  fashion;  but  it 
would  be  absurd  to  say  that  he  has  made  the 
same  profound  impression  upon  the  great  class  of 
normal  novel-readers  that  Arnold  Bennett  once 
made,  or  H.  G.  Wells,  or  William  de  Morgan  in 
his  brief  day,  or  even  such  cheap-jacks  as  Anthony 
Hope  Hawkins  and  William  J.  Locke.  His  show 
fascinates,  but  his  philosophy,  in  the  last  analysis, 
is  unbearable.  And  in  particular  it  is  unbearable 
to  women.  One  rarely  meets  a  woman  who, 
stripped  of  affection,  shows  any  genuine  enthu 
siasm  for  a  Conrad  book,  or,  indeed,  any  genuine 
comprehension  of  it.  The  feminine  mind,  which 
rules  in  English  fiction,  both  as  producer  and  as 
consumer,  craves  inevitably  a  more  confident  and 
comforting  view  of  the  world  than  Conrad  has  to 
offer.  It  seeks,  not  disillusion,  but  illusion.  It 
protects  itself  against  the  disquieting  questioning 
of  life  by  pretending  that  all  the  riddles  have  been 


JOSEPH  CONRAD 33 

solved,  that  each  new  sage  answers  them  afresh, 
that  a  few  simple  principles  suffice  to  dispose  of 
them.  Women,  one  may  say,  have  to  subscribe 
to  absurdities  in  order  to  account  for  themselves 
at  all;  it  is  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  which 
sends  them  to  priests,  as  to  other  quacks.  This  is 
not  because  they  are  unintelligent,  but  rather  be 
cause  they  have  that  sharp  and  sure  sort  of  intelli 
gence  which  is  instinctive,  and  which  passes  under 
the  name  of  intuition.  It  teaches  them  that  the 
taboos  which  surround  them,  however  absurd  at 
bottom,  nevertheless  penalize  their  courage  and 
curiosity  with  unescapable  dudgeon,  and  so  they 
become  partisans  of  the  existing  order,  and,  per 
corollary,  of  the  existing  ethic.  They  may  be  men 
aced  by  phantoms,  but  at  all  events  these  phan 
toms  really  menace  them.  A  woman  who  reacted 
otherwise  than  with  distrust  to  such  a  book  as  "Vic 
tory"  would  be  as  abnormal  as  a  woman  who  em 
braced  "Jenseits  von  Gut  und  Bose"  or  "The  In 
estimable  Life  of  the  Great  Gargantua." 

As  for  Conrad,  he  retaliates  by  approaching  the 
sex  somewhat  gingerly.  His  women,  in  the  main, 
are  no  more  than  soiled  and  tattered  cards  in  a 
game  played  by  the  gods.  The  effort  to  erect  them 
into  the  customary  "sympathetic"  heroines  of  fic 
tion  always  breaks  down  under  the  drum  fire  of 


34  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

the  plain  facts.  He  sees  quite  accurately,  it 
seems  to  me,  how  vastly  the  role  of  women  has 
been  exaggerated,  how  little  they  amount  to  in  the 
authentic  struggle  of  man.  His  heroes  are  moved 
by  avarice,  by  ambition,  by  rebellion,  by  fear,  by 
that  "obscure  inner  necessity"  which  passes  for 
nobility  or  the  sense  of  duty — never  by  that  puer 
ile  passion  which  is  the  mainspring  of  all  mascu 
line  acts  and  aspirations  in  popular  novels  and  ort 
the  stage.  If  they  yield  to  amour  at  all,  it  is  only 
at  the  urging  of  some  more  powerful  and  character 
istic  impulse,  e.g.,  a  fantastic  notion  of  chivalry,  as 
in  the  case  of  Heyst,  or  the  thirst  for  dominion,  as  in 
the  case  of  Kurtz.  The  one  exception  is  offered 
by  Razumov — and  Razumov  is  Conrad's  picture 
of  a  flabby  fool,  of  a  sentimentalist  destroyed  by 
his  sentimentality.  Dreiser  has  shown  much  the 
same  process  in  Witla  and  Cowperwood,  but  he  is 
less  free  from  the  conventional  obsession  than/ 
Conrad ;  he  takes  a  love  affair  far  more  naively,  and 
hence  far  more  seriously. 

I  used  to  wonder  why  Conrad  never  tackled  a 
straight-out  story  of  adultery  under  Christianity, 
the  standard  matter  of  all  our  more  pretentious 
fiction  and  drama.  I  was  curious  to  see  what  his 
ethical  agnosticism  would  make  of  it.  The  con 
clusion  I  came  to  at  first  was  that  his  failure 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  35 

marked  the  limitations  of  his  courage — in  brief, 
that  he  hesitated  to  go  against  the  orthodox  axioms 
and  assumptions  in  the  department  where  they  were 
most  powerfully  maintained.  But  it  seems  to  me 
now  that  his  abstinence  has  not  been  the  fruit  of 
timidity,  but  of  disdain.  He  has  shied  at  the  hy 
pothesis,  not  at  its  implications.  His  whole  work, 
in  truth,  is  a  destructive  criticism  of  the  prevailing 
notion  that  such  a  story  is  momentous  and  worth 
telling.  The  current  gyneolatry  is  as  far  outside 
his  scheme  of  things  as  the  current  program  of  re 
wards  and  punishments,  sins  and  virtues,  causes 
and  effects.  He  not  only  sees  clearly  that  the  des 
tiny  and  soul  of  man  are  not  moulded  by  petty 
jousts  of  sex,  as  the  prophets  of  romantic  love 
would  have  us  believe;  he  is  so  impatient  of  the 
fallacy  that  he  puts  it  as  far  behind  him  as  possi 
ble,  and  sets  his  conflicts  amid  scenes  that  it  cannot 
penetrate,  save  as  a  palpable  absurdity.  Love,  in 
his  stories,  is  either  a  feeble  phosphorescence  or 
a  gigantic  grotesquerie.  In  "Heart  of  Darkness," 
perhaps,  we  get  his  typical  view  of  it.  Over  all 
the  frenzy  and  horror  of  the  tale  itself  floats  the 
irony  of  the  trusting  heart  back  in  Brussels.  Here 
we  have  his  measure  of  the  master  sentimentality 
of  them  all. 


36  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

§4 

As  for  Conrad  the  literary  craftsman,  opposing 
him  for  the  moment  to  Conrad  the  showman  of  the 
human  comedy,  the  quality  that  all  who  write  about 
him  seem  chiefly  to  mark  in  him  is  his  scorn  of 
conventional  form,  his  tendency  to  approach  his 
story  from  two  directions  at  once,  his  frequent 
involvement  in  apparently  inextricable  snarls  of 
narrative,  sub-narrative  and  sub-sub-narrative. 
"Lord  Jim,"  for  example,  starts  out  in  the  third 
person,  presently  swings  into  an  exhaustive  psycho 
logical  discussion  by  the  mythical  Marlow,  then 
goes  into  a  brisk  narrative  at  second  (and  some 
times  at  third)  hand,  and  finally  comes  to  a  halt 
upon  an  unresolved  dissonance,  a  half -heard  chord 
of  the  ninth:  "And  that's  the  end.  He  passes 
away  under  a  cloud,  inscrutable  at  heart,  for 
gotten,  unforgiven,  and  excessively  romantic." 
"Falk"  is  also  a  story  within  a  story;  this  time  the 
narrator  is  "one  who  had  not  spoken  before,  a  man 
over  fifty."  In  "Amy  Foster"  romance  is  filtered 
through  the  prosaic  soul  of  a  country  doctor;  it  is 
almost  as  if  a  statistician  told  the  tale  of  Horatius 
at  the  bridge.  In  "Under  Western  Eyes"  the  o^- 
fuscation  is  achieved  by  "a  teacher  of  languages," 
endlessly  lamenting  his  lack  of  the  "high  gifts  of 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  37 

imagination  and  expression."  In  "Youth"  and 
"Heart  of  Darkness"  the  chronicler  and  specu 
lator  is  the  shadowy  Marlow,  a  "cloak  to  goe  in- 
bisabell"  for  Conrad  himself.  In  "Chance" 
there  are  two  separate  stories,  imperfectly  welded 
together.  Elsewhere  there  are  hesitations,  goings 
back,  interpolations,  interludes  in  the  Socratic 
manner.  And  almost  always  there  is  heaviness 
in  the  getting  under  weigh.  In  "Heart  of  Dark 
ness"  we  are  on  the  twentieth  page  before  we  see 
the  mouth  of  the  great  river,  and  in  "Falk"  we 
are  on  the  twenty-fourth  before  we  get  a  glimpse  of 
Falk.  "Chance"  is  nearly  half  done  before  the 
drift  of  the  action  is  clearly  apparent.  In  "Al- 
mayer's  Folly"  we  are  thrown  into  the  middle  of 
a  story,  and  do  not  discover  its  beginning  until  we 
come  to  "An  Outcast  of  the  Islands,"  a  later  book. 
As  in  structure,  so  in  detail.  Conrad  pauses  to  ex 
plain,  to  speculate,  to  look  about.  Whole  chap 
ters  concern  themselves  with  detailed  discussions 
of  motives,  with  exchanges  of  views,  with  generali 
zations  abandoned  as  soon  as  they  are  made.  Even 
the  author's  own  story,  "A  Personal  Record"  (in 
the  English  edition,  "Some  Reminiscences")  starts 
near  the  end,  and  then  goes  back,  halting  tortu 
ously,  to  the  beginning. 

In  the  eyes  of  orthodox  criticism,  of  course,  this 


38  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

is  a  grave  fault.  The  Kipling-Wells  style  of  swift, 
shouldering,  button-holing  writing  has  accustomed 
readers  and  critics  alike  to  a  straight  course  and 
a  rapid  tempo.  Moreover,  it  has  accustomed  them 
to  a  forthright  certainty  and  directness  of  state 
ment;  they  expect  an  author  to  account  for  his 
characters  at  once,  and  on  grounds  instantly  com 
prehensible.  This  omniscience  is  a  part  of  the 
prodigality  of  moral  theory  that  I  have  been  dis 
cussing.  An  author  who  knows  just  what  is  the 
matter  with  the  world  may  be  quite  reasonably  ex 
pected  to  know  just  what  is  the  matter  with  his 
hero.  Neither  sort  of  assurance,  I  need  not  say, 
is  to  be  found  in  Conrad.  He  is  an  inquirer,  not 
a  law-giver;  an  experimentalist,  not  a  doctor.  One 
constantly  derives  from  his  stories  the  notion  that 
he  is  as  much  puzzled  by  his  characters  as  the 
reader  is — that  he,  too,  is  feeling  his  way  among 
shadowy  evidences.  The  discoveries  that  we 
make,  about  Lord  Jim,  about  Nostromo  or  about 
Kurtz,  come  as  fortuitously  and  as  unexpectedly 
as  the  discoveries  we  make  about  the  real  figures 
of  our  world.  The  picture  is  built  up  bit  by  bit; 
it  is  never  flashed  suddenly  and  completely  as  by 
best-seller  calciums;  it  remains  a  bit  dim  at  the 
end.  But  in  that  very  dimness,  so  tantalizing  and 
yet  so  revealing,  lies  two-thirds  of  Conrad's  art,  or 


JOSEPH  CONRAD 39 

his  craft,  or  his  trick,  or  whatever  you  choose  to  call 
it.  What  he  shows  us  is  blurred  at  the  edges,  but 
so  is  life  itself  blurred  at  the  edges.  We  see  least 
clearly  precisely  what  is  nearest  to  us,  and  is  hence 
most  real  to  us.  A  man  may  profess  to  understand 
the  President  of  the  United  States,  but  he  seldom 
alleges,  even  to  himself,  that  he  understands  his 
own  wife. 

In  the  character  and  in  its  reactions,  in  the  act 
and  in  the  motive:  always  that  tremulousness,  that 
groping,  that  confession  of  final  bewilderment. 
"He  passes  away  under  a  cloud,  inscrutable  at 
heart  .  .  ."  And  the  cloud  enshrouds  the  inner 
man  as  well  as  the  outer,  the  secret  springs  of  his 
being  as  well  as  the  overt  events  of  his  life.  "His 
meanest  creatures,"  says  Arthur  Symons,  "have  in 
them  a  touch  of  honour,  of  honesty,  or  of  heroism ; 
his  heroes  have  always  some  error,  weakness,  or 
mistake,  some  sin  or  crime,  to  redeem."  What  is 
Lord  Jim,  scoundrel  and  poltroon  or  gallant 
knight?  What  is  Captain  MacWhirr,  hero  or  sim 
ply  ass?  What  is  Falk,  beast  or  idealist?  One 
leaves  "Heart  of  Darkness"  in  that  palpitating  con 
fusion  which  is  shot  through  with  intense  curiosity. 
Kurtz  is  at  once  the  most  abominable  of  rogues 
and  the  most  fantastic  of  dreamers.  It  is  impos 
sible  to  differentiate  between  his  vision  and  his 


40  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

crimes,  though  all  that  we  look  upon  as  order  in 
the  universe  stands  between  them.  In  Dreiser's 
novels  there  is  the  same  anarchy  of  valuations, 
and  it  is  chiefly  responsible  for  the  rage  he  excites 
in  the  unintelligent.  The  essential  thing  about 
Cowperwood  is  that  he  is  two  diverse  beings  at 
once;  a  puerile  chaser  of  women  and  a  great  artist, 
a  guinea  pig  and  half  a  god.  The  essential  thing 
about  Carrie  Meeber  is  that  she  remains  innocent 
in  the  midst  of  her  contaminations,  that  the  virgin 
lives  on  in  the  kept  woman.  This  is  not  the  art 
of  fiction  as  it  is  conventionally  practised  and 
understood.  It  is  not  explanation,  labelling,  as 
surance,  moralizing.  In  the  cant  of  newspaper 
criticism,  it  does  not  "satisfy."  But  the  great 
artist  is  never  one  who  satisfies  in  that  feeble 
sense;  he  leaves  the  business  to  mountebanks  who 
do  it  better.  "My  purpose,"  said  Ibsen,  "is  not 
to  answer  questions;  it  is  to  ask  them."  The  spec 
tator  must  bring  something  with  him  beyond  the 
mere  faculty  of  attention.  If,  coming  to  Conrad, 
he  cannot,  he  is  at  the  wrong  door. 

§5 

Conrad's  predilection  for  barbarous  scenes  and 
the  more  bald  and  shocking  sort  of  drama  has  an 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  41 

obviously  autobiographical  basis.  His  own  road 
ran  into  strange  places  in  the  days  of  his  youth. 
He  moved  among  men  who  were  menaced  by  all 
the  terrestrial  cruelties,  and  by  the  almost  un 
checked  rivalry  and  rapacity  of  their  fellow  men, 
without  any  appreciable  barriers,  whether  of  law, 
of  convention  or  of  sentimentality,  to  shield  them. 
The  struggle  for  existence,  as  he  saw  it,  was  well 
nigh  as  purely  physical  among  human  beings  as 
among  the  carnivora  of  the  jungle.  Some  of  his 
stories,  and  among  them  his  very  best,  are  plainly 
little  more  than  transcripts  of  his  own  experience. 
He  himself  is  the  enchanted  boy  of  "Youth";  he 
is  the  ship-master  of  "Heart  of  Darkness";  he  hov 
ers  in  the  background  of  all  the  island  books  and 
is  visibly  present  in  most  of  the  tales  of  the  sea. 

And  what  he  got  out  of  that  early  experience  was 
more  than  a  mere  body  of  reminiscence;  it  was  a 
scheme  of  valuations.  He  came  to  his  writing 
years  with  a  sailor's  disdain  for  the  trifling  haz 
ards  and  emprises  of  market  places  and  drawing 
rooms,  and  it  shows  itself  whenever  he  sets  pen 
to  paper.  A  conflict,  it  would  seem,  can  make 
no  impression  upon  him  save  it  be  colossal.  When 
his  men  combat,  not  nature,  but  other  men,  they 
carry  over  into  the  business  the  gigantic  method  of 
sailors  battling  with  a  tempest.  "The  Secret 


42  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

Agent"  and  "Under  Western  Eyes"  fill  the  dull 
back  streets  of  London  and  Geneva  with  pursuits, 
homicides  and  dynamitings.  "Nostromo"  is  a 
long  record  of  treacheries,  butcheries  and  carnali 
ties.  "A  Point  of  Honor"  is  coloured  by  the  sense 
less,  insatiable  ferocity  of  Gobineau's  "Renais 
sance."  "Victory"  ends  with  a  massacre  of  all 
the  chief  personages,  a  veritable  catastrophe  of 
blood.  Whenever  he  turns  from  the  starker  lusts 
to  the  pale  passions  of  man  under  civilization,  Con 
rad  fails.  "The  Return"  is  a  thoroughly  infirm 
piece  of  writing — a  second  rate  magazine  story. 
One  concludes  at  once  that  the  author  himself  does 
not  believe  in  it.  "The  Inheritors"  is  worse;  it  be 
comes,  after  the  first  few  pages,  a  flaccid  artificial 
ity,  a  bore.  It  is  impossible  to  imagine  the  chief 
characters  of  the  Conrad  gallery  in  such  scenes. 
Think  of  Captain  MacWhirr  reacting  to  social 
tradition,  Lord  Jim  immersed  in  the  class  war, 
Lena  Hermann  seduced  by  the  fashions,  Almayer 
a  candidate  for  office!  As  well  think  of  Huckle 
berry  Finn  at  Harvard,  or  Tom  Jones  practising 
law. 

These  things  do  not  interest  Conrad,  chiefly,  I 
suppose,  because  he  does  not  understand  them. 
His  concern,  one  may  say,  is  with  the  gross  anatomy 
of  passion,  not  with  its  histology.  He  seeks  to  de- 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  43 

pict  emotion,  not  in  its  ultimate  attenuation,  but 
in  its  fundamental  innocence  and  fury.  Inevi 
tably,  his  materials  are  those  of  what  we  call  melo 
drama;  he  is  at  one,  in  the  bare  substance  of  his 
tales,  with  the  manufacturers  of  the  baldest  shock 
ers.  But  with  a  difference! — a  difference,  to  wit, 
of  approach  and  comprehension,  a  difference  abys 
mal  and  revolutionary.  He  lifts  melodrama  to 
the  dignity  of  an  important  business,  and  makes 
it  a  means  to  an  end  that  the  mere  shock-monger 
never  dreams  of.  In  itself,  remember,  all  this 
up-roar  and  blood-letting  is  not  incredible,  nor 
even  improbable.  The  world,  for  all  the  pressure 
of  order,  is  still  full  of  savage  and  stupendous  con 
flicts,  of  murders  and  debaucheries,  of  crimes  in 
describable  and  adventures  almost  unimaginable. 
One  cannot  reasonably  ask  a  novelist  to  deny  them 
or  to  gloss  over  them;  all  one  may  demand  of  him 
is  that,  if  he  make  artistic  use  of  them,  he  render 
them  understandable — that  he  logically  account  for 
them,  that  he  give  them  plausibility  by  showing 
their  genesis  in  intelligible  motives  and  colourable 
events. 

The  objection  to  the  conventional  melodramatist 
is  that  he  fails  to  do  this.  It  is  not  that  his  efforts 
are  too  florid,  but  that  his  causes  are  too  puny. 
For  all  his  exuberance  of  fancy,  he  seldom  shows 


44  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

us  a  downright  impossible  event;  what  he  does  con 
stantly  show  us  is  an  inadequate  and  hence  uncon 
vincing  motive.  In  a  cheap  theatre  we  see  a  bad 
actor,  imperfectly  disguised  as  a  viscount,  bind  a 
shrieking  young  woman  to  the  railroad  tracks,  with 
an  express  train  approaching.  Why  does  he  do  it? 
The  melodramatist  offers  a  double-headed  reason, 
the  first  part  being  that  the  viscount  is  an  amalgam 
of  Satan  and  Don  Juan  and  the  second  being  that 
the  young  woman  prefers  death  to  dishonour. 
Both  parts  are  absurd.  Our  eyes  show  us  at  once 
that  the  fellow  is  far  more  the  floorwalker,  the  head 
barber,  the  Knight  of  Pythias  than  either  the  Satan 
or  the  Don  Juan,  and  our  experience  of  life  tells  us 
that  young  women  in  yellow  wigs  do  not  actually 
rate  their  virginity  so  dearly.  But  women  are  un 
doubtedly  done  to  death  in  this  way — not  every  day, 
perhaps,  but  now  and  then.  Men  bind  them,  trains 
run  over  them,  the  newspapers  discuss  the  crime, 
the  pursuit  of  the  felon,  the  ensuing  jousting  of 
the  jurisconsults.  Why,  then?  The  true  answer, 
when  it  is  forthcoming  at  all,  is  always  much  more 
complex  than  the  melodramatist's  answer.  It  may 
be  so  enormously  complex,  indeed,  as  to  transcend 
all  the  normal  laws  of  cause  and  effect.  It  may  be 
an  answer  made  up  largely,  or  even  wholly,  of  the 
fantastic,  the  astounding,  the  unearthly  reasons  of 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  45 

lunacy.  That  is  the  chief,  if  not  the  only  differ 
ence  between  melodrama  and  reality.  The  events 
of  the  two  may  be,  and  often  are  identical.  It  is 
only  in  their  underlying  network  of  causes  that  they 
are  dissimilar  and  incommensurate. 

Here,  in  brief,  you  have  the  point  of  essential 
distinction  between  the  stories  of  Conrad,  a  supreme 
artist  in  fiction,  and  the  trashy  confections  of  the 
literary  artisans — e.g.,  Sienkiewicz,  Dumas,  Lew 
Wallace,  and  their  kind.  Conrad's  materials,  at 
bottom,  are  almost  identical  with  those  of  the  arti 
sans.  He,  too,  has  his  chariot  races,  his  castaways, 
his  carnivals  of  blood  in  the  arena.  He,  too,  takes 
us  through  shipwrecks,  revolutions,  assassinations, 
gaudy  heroisms,  abominable  treacheries.  But 
always  he  illuminates  the  nude  and  amazing  event 
with  shafts  of  light  which  reveal  not  only  the  last 
detail  of  its  workings,  but  also  the  complex  of  ori 
gins  and  inducements  behind  it.  Always,  he 
throws  about  it  a  probability  which,  in  the  end,  be 
comes  almost  inevitability.  His  "Nostromo,"  for 
example,  in  its  externals,  is  a  mere  tale  of  South 
American  turmoil;  its  materials  are  those  of  "Sol 
diers  of  Fortune."  But  what  a  difference  in 
method,  in  point  of  approach,  in  inner  content! 
Davis  was  content  to  show  the  overt  act,  scarcely 
accounting  for  it  at  all,  and  then  only  in  terms  of 


46  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

conventional  romance.  Conrad  penetrates  to  the 
motive  concealed  in  it,  the  psychological  spring  and 
basis  of  it,  the  whole  fabric  of  weakness,  habit  and 
aberration  underlying  it.  The  one  achieved  an 
agreeable  romance,  and  an  agreeable  romance  only. 
The  other  achieves  an  extraordinarily  brilliant  and 
incisive  study  of  the  Latin-American  temperament 
— a  full  length  exposure  of  the  perverse  passions 
and  incomprehensible  ideals  which  provoke  pre 
sumably  sane  men  to  pursue  one  another 
like  wolves,  and  of  the  reactions  of  that  in 
cessant  pursuit  upon  the  men  themselves,  and 
upon  their  primary  ideas,  and  upon  the  institutions 
under  which  they  live.  I  do  not  say  that  Conrad  is 
always  exhaustive  in  his  explanations,  or  that  he  is 
accurate.  In  the  first  case  I  know  that  he  often  is 
not,  in  the  second  case  I  do  not  know  whether  he  is 
or  he  isn't.  But  I  do  say  that,  within  the  scope  of 
his  vision,  he  is  wholly  convincing;  that  the  men 
and  women  he  sets  into  his  scene  show  ineluctably 
vivid  and  persuasive  personality;  that  the  theories 
he  brings  forward  to  account  for  their  acts  are  in 
telligible;  that  the  effects  of  those  acts,  upon  actors 
and  immediate  spectators  alike,  are  such  as  might 
be  reasonably  expected  to  issue;  that  the  final  im 
pression  is  one  of  searching  and  indubitable 
veracity.  One  leaves  "Nostromo"  with  a  memory 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  47 

as  intense  and  lucid  as  that  of  a  real  experience. 
The  thing  is  not  mere  photography.  It  is  interpre 
tative  painting  at  its  highest. 

In  all  his  stories  you  will  find  this  same  concern 
with  the  inextricable  movement  of  phenomena  and 
noumena  between  event  and  event,  this  same  cur 
iosity  as  to  first  causes  and  ultimate  effects.  Some 
times,  as  in  "The  Point  of  Honor"  and  "The  End 
of  the  Tether,"  he  attempts  to  work  out  the  obscure 
genesis,  in  some  chance  emotion  or  experience,  of 
an  extraordinary  series  of  transactions.  At  other 
times,  as  in  "Typhoon,"  "Youth,"  "Falk"  and  "The 
Shadow  Line,"  his  endeavour  is  to  determine  the 
effect  of  some  gigantic  and  fortuitous  event  upon  the 
mind  and  soul  of  a  given  man.  At  yet  other  times, 
as  in  "Almayer's  Folly,"  "Lord  Jim"  and  "Under 
Western  Eyes,"  it  is  his  aim  to  show  how  cause  and 
effect  are  intricately  commingled,  so  that  it  is  diffi 
cult  to  separate  motive  from  consequence,  and  con 
sequence  from  motive.  But  always  it  is  the  proc 
ess  of  mind  rather  than  the  actual  act  that  interests 
him.  Always  he  is  trying  to  penetrate  the  actor's 
mask  and  interpret  the  actor's  frenzy.  It  is  this 
concern  with  the  profounder  aspects  of  human  na 
ture,  this  bold  grappling  with  the  deeper  and  more 
recondite  problems  of  his  art,  that  gives  him  con 
sideration  as  a  first-rate  artist.  He  differs  from 


48  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

the  common  novelists  of  his  time  as  a  Beethoven 
differs  from  a  Mendelssohn.  Some  of  them  are 
quite  his  equals  in  technical  skill,  and  a  few  of 
them,  notably  Bennett  and  Wells,  often  show  an  ac 
tual  superiority,  but  when  it  comes  to  that  graver 
business  which  underlies  all  mere  virtuosity,  he  is 
unmistakably  the  superior  of  the  whole  corps  of 
them. 

This  superiority  is  only  the  more  vividly  revealed 
by  the  shop-worn  shoddiness  of  most  of  his  ma 
terials.  He  takes  whatever  is  nearest  to  hand,  out 
of  his  own  rich  experience  or  out  of  the  common 
store  of  romance.  He  seems  to  disdain  the  petty 
advantages  which  go  with  the  invention  of  novel 
plots,  extravagant  characters  and  unprecedented 
snarls  of  circumstance.  All  the  classical  doings  of 
anarchists  are  to  be  found  in  "The  Secret  Agent"; 
one  has  heard  them  copiously  credited,  of  late,  to 
rso-called  Reds.  "Youth,"  as  a  story,  is  no  more 
than  an  orthodox  sea  story,  and  W.  Clark  Russell 
contrived  better  ones.  In  "Chance"  we  have  a  stern 
father  at  his  immemorial  tricks.  In  "Victory" 
there  are  villains  worthy  of  Jack  B.  Yeats'  melo 
dramas  of  the  Spanish  Main.  In  "Nostromo"  we 
encounter  the  whole  stock  company  of  Richard 
Harding  Davis  and  0.  Henry.  And  in  "Under 
Western  Eyes"  the  protagonist  is  one  who  finds  his 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  49 

love  among  the  women  of  his  enemies — a  situation 
at  the  heart  of  all  the  military  melodramas  ever 
written. 

But  what  Conrad  makes  of  that  ancient  and  fly 
blown  stuff,  that  rubbish  from  the  lumber  room  of 
the  imagination!  Consider,  for  example,  "Under 
Western  Eyes,"  by  no  means  the  best  of  his  stories. 
The  plot  is  that  of  "Shenandoah"  and  "Held  by  the 
Enemy" — but  how  brilliantly  it  is  endowed  with  a 
new  significance,  how  penetratingly  its  remotest 
currents  are  followed  out,  how  magnificently  it  is 
made  to  fit  into  that  colossal  panorama  of  Holy 
Russia!  It  is  always  this  background,  this  complex 
of  obscure  and  baffling  influences,  this  drama  under 
the  drama,  that  Conrad  spends  his  skill  upon,  and 
not  the  obvious  commerce  of  the  actual  stage.  It  is 
not  the  special  effect  that  he  seeks,  but  the  general 
effect.  It  is  not  so  much  man  the  individual  that 
interests  him,  as  the  shadowy  accumulation  of  tra 
ditions,  instincts  and  blind  chances  which  shapes  the 
individual's  destiny.  Here,  true  enough,  we  have 
a  full-length  portrait  of  Razumov,  glowing  with  life. 
But  here,  far  more  importantly,  we  also  have  an 
amazingly  meticulous  and  illuminating  study  of  the 
Russian  character,  with  all  its  confused  mingling 
of  Western  realism  and  Oriental  fogginess,  its  crazy 
tendency  to  go  shooting  off  into  the  spaces  of  an  in- 


50  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

comprehensible  metaphysic,  its  general  transcend 
ence  of  all  that  we  Celts  and  Saxons  and  Latins  hold 
to  be  true  of  human  motive  and  human  act.  Russia 
is  a  world  apart:  that  is  the  sum  and  substance  of 
the  tale.  In  the  island  stories  we  have  the  same 
elaborate  projection  of  the  East,  of  its  fantastic  bar 
barism,  of  brooding  Asia.  And  in  the  sea  stories 
we  have,  perhaps  for  the  first  time  in  English  fiction, 
a  vast  and  adequate  picture  of  the  sea,  the  symbol 
at  once  of  man's  eternal  striving  and  of  his  eternal 
impotence.  Here,  at  last,  the  colossus  has  found  its 
interpreter.  There  is  in  "Typhoon"  and  "The 
Nigger  of  the  Narcissus,"  and,  above  all,  in  "The 
Mirror  of  the  Sea,"  a  poetic  evocation  of  the  sea's 
stupendous  majesty  that  is  unparalleled  outside  the 
ancient  sagas.  Conrad  describes  it  with  a  degree 
of  graphic  skill  that  is  superb  and  incomparable. 
He  challenges  at  once  the  pictorial  vigour  of  Hugo 
and  the  aesthetic  sensitiveness  of  Lafcadio  Hearn, 
and  surpasses  them  both.  And  beyond  this  mere 
dazzling  visualization,  he  gets  into  his  pictures  an 
overwhelming  sense  of  that  vast  drama  of  which 
they  are  no  more  than  the  flat,  lifeless  representation 
— of  that  inexorable  and  uncompassionate  struggle 
which  is  life  itself.  The  sea  to  him  is  a  living 
thing,  an  omnipotent  and  unfathomable  thing,  al 
most  a  god.  He  sees  it  as  the  Eternal  Enemy,  de- 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  51 

ceitful  in  its  caresses,  sudden  in  its  rages,  relent 
less  in  its  enmities,  and  forever  a  mystery. 

.        §6 

Conrad's  first  novel,  "Almayer's  Folly,"  was 
printed  in  1895.  He  tells  us  in  "A  Personal  Rec 
ord"  that  it  took  him  seven  years  to  write  it — seven 
years  of  pertinacious  effort,  of  trial  and  error,  of 
learning  how  to  write.  He  was,  at  this  time  thirty- 
eight  years  old.  Seventeen  years  before,  landing 
in  England  to  fit  himself  for  the  British  merchant 
service,  he  had  made  his  first  acquaintance  with  the 
English  language.  The  interval  had  been  spent 
almost  continuously  at  sea — in  the  Eastern  islands, 
along  the  China  coast,  on  the  Congo  and  in  the 
South  Atlantic.  That  he  hesitated  between  French 
and  English  is  a  story  often  told,  but  he  himself  is 
authority  for  the  statement  that  it  is  more  sym 
bolical  than  true.  Flaubert,  in  those  days,  was 
his  idol,  as  we  know,  but  the  speech  of  his  daily 
business  won,  and  English  literature  reaped  the 
greatest  of  all  its  usufructs  from  English  sea 
power.  To  this  day  there  are  marks  of  his  origins 
in  his  style.  His  periods,  more  than  once,  have 
an  inept  and  foreign  smack.  In  fishing  for  the 
right  phrase  one  sometimes  feels  that  he  finds  a 


52  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

French  phrase,  or  even  a  Polish  phrase,  and  that  it 
loses  something  by  being  done  into  English. 

The  credit  for  discovering  "Almayer's  Folly," 
as  the  publishers  say,  belongs  to  Edward  Garnett, 
then  a  reader  for  T.  Fisher  Unwin.  The  book  was 
brought  out  modestly  and  seems  to  have  received 
little  attention.  The  first  edition,  it  would  appear, 
ran  to  no  more  than  a  thousand  copies;  at  all  events, 
specimens  of  it  are  now  very  hard  to  find,  and  col 
lectors  pay  high  prices  for  them.  When  "An  Out 
cast  of  the  Islands"  followed,  a  year  later,  a  few 
alert  readers  began  to  take  notice  of  the  author, 
and  one  of  them  was  Sir  (then  Mr.)  Hugh  Clif 
ford,  a  former  Governor  of  the  Federated  Malay 
States  and  himself  the  author  of  several  excellent 
books  upon  the  Malay.  Clifford  gave  Conrad  en 
couragement  privately  and  talked  him  up  in  liter 
ary  circles,  but  the  majority  of  English  critics  re 
mained  unaware  of  him.  After  an  interval  of  two 
years,  during  which  he  struggled  between  his  desire 
to  write  and  the  temptation  to  return  to  the  sea,  he 
published  "The  Nigger  of  the  Narcissus."  *  It 
made  a  fair  success  of  esteem,  but  still  there  was 
no  recognition  of  the  author's  true  stature.  Then 
followed  "Tales  of  Unrest"  and  "Lord  Jim,"  and 

i  Printed  in  the  United  States  as  Children  of  the  Sea,  but 
now  restored  to  its  original  title. 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  53 

after  them  the  feeblest  of  all  the  Conrad  books, 
"The  Inheritors,"  written  in  collaboration  with 
Ford  Madox  Hueffer.  It  is  easy  to  see  in  this  col 
laboration,  and  no  less  in  the  character  of  the  book, 
an  indication  of  irresolution,  and  perhaps  even  of 
downright  loss  of  hope.  But  success,  in  fact,  was 
just  around  the  corner.  In  1902  came  "Youth," 
and  straightway  Conrad  was  the  lion  of  literary  Lon 
don.  The  chorus  of  approval  that  greeted  it  was 
almost  a  roar;  all  sorts  of  critics  and  reviewers, 
from  H.  G.  Wells  to  W.  L.  Courtney,  and  from 
John  Galsworthy  to  W.  Robertson  Nicoll,  took  a 
hand.  Writing  home  to  the  New  York  Times,  W. 
L.  Alden  reported  that  he  had  "not  heard  one  dis 
senting  voice  in  regard  to  the  book,"  but  that  the 
praise  it  received  "was  unanimous,"  and  that  the 
newspapers  and  literary  weeklies  rivalled  one  an 
other  "in  their  efforts  to  express  their  admiration 
for  it." 

This  benign  whooping,  however,  failed  to  awaken 
the  enthusiasm  of  the  mass  of  novel-readers  and 
brought-  but  meagre  orders  from  the  circulating  li 
braries.  "Typhoon"  came  upon  the  heels  of 
"Youth,"  but  still  the  sales  of  the  Conrad  books 
continued  small  and  the  author  remained  in  very 
uncomfortable  circumstances.  Even  after  four  or 
five  years  he  was  still  so  poor  that  he  was  glad  to 


54  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

accept  a  modest  pension  from  the  British  Civil 
List.  This  official  recognition  of  his  genius,  when 
it  came  at  last,  seems  to  have  impressed  the  public, 
characteristically  enough,  far  more  than  his  books 
themselves  had  done,  and  the  foundations  were  thus 
laid  for  that  wider  recognition  of  his  genius  which 
now  prevails.  But  getting  him  on  his  legs  was 
slow  work,  and  such  friends  as  Hueffer,  Clifford 
and  Galsworthy  had  to  do  a  lot  of  arduous  log 
rolling.  Even  after  the  splash  made  by  "Youth" 
his  publishing  arrangements  seem  to  have  remained 
somewhat  insecure.  His  first  eleven  books  show 
six  different  imprints;  it  was  not  until  his  twelfth 
that  he  settled  down  to  a  publisher.  His  American 
editions  tell  an  even  stranger  story.  The  first  six 
of  them  were  brought  out  by  six  different  publish 
ers;  the  first  eight  by  no  less  than  seven.  But  to 
day  he  has  a  regular  American  publisher  at  last, 
and  in  England  a  complete  edition  of  his  works  is 
in  progress. 

Thanks  to  the  indefatigable  efforts  of  that  Amer 
ican  publisher  (who  labours  for  Gene  Stratton-Por- 
ter  and  Gerald  Stanley  Lee  in  the  same  manner) 
Conrad  has  been  forced  upon  the  public  notice  in 
the  United  States,  and  it  is  the  fashion  among  all 
who  pretend  to  aesthetic  consciousness  to  read  him, 
or,  at  all  events,  to  talk  about  him.  His  books  have 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  55 

been  brought  together  in  a  uniform  edition  for  the 
newly  intellectual,  bound  in  blue  leather,  like  the 
"complete  library  sets"  of  Kipling,  0.  Henry,  Guy 
de  Maupassant  and  Paul  de  Kock.  The  more  liter 
ary  newspapers  print  his  praises;  he  is  hymned 
by  professorial  critics  as  a  prophet  of  virtue;  his 
genius  is  certificated  by  such  diverse  authorities  as 
Hildegarde  Hawthorne  and  Louis  Joseph  Vance;  I 
myself  lately  sat  on  a  Conrad  Committee,  along 
with  Booth  Tarkington,  David  Belasco,  Irvin  Cobb, 
Walter  Pritchard  Eaton  and  Hamlin  Garland — 
surely  an  astounding  posse  of  literati!  Moreover, 
Conrad  himself  shows  a  disposition  to  reach  out  for 
a  wider  audience.  His  "Victory,"  first  published 
in  Munsefs  Magazine,  revealed  obvious  efforts  to 
be  intelligible  to  the  general.  A  few  more  turns 
of  the  screw  and  it  might  have  gone  into  the  Satur 
day  Evening  Post,  between  serials  by  Harris  Dick- 
son  and  Rex  Beach. 

Meanwhile,  in  the  shadow  of  this  painfully  grow 
ing  celebrity  as  a  novelist,  Conrad  takes  on  con- 
deration  as  a  bibelot,  and  the  dealers  in  first  edi 
tions  probably  make  more  profit  out  of  some  of  his 
books  than  ever  he  has  made  himself.  His  manu 
scripts  are  cornered,  I  believe,  by  an  eminent 
collector  of  literary  curiosities  in  New  York,  who 
seems  to  have  a  contract  with  the  novelist  to  take 


56  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

them  as  fast  as  they  are  produced — perhaps  the 
only  arrangement  of  the  sort  in  literary  history. 
His  first  editions  begin  to  bring  higher  premiums 
than  those  of  any  other  living  author.  Considering 
the  fact  that  the  oldest  of  them  is  less  than  twenty- 
five  years  old,  they  probably  set  new  records  for 
the  trade.  Even  the  latest  in  date  are  eagerly 
sought,  and  it  is  not  uncommon  to  see  an  English 
edition  of  a  Conrad  book  sold  at  an  advance  in 
New  York  within  a  month  of  its  publication.1 

As  I  hint,  however,  there  is  not  much  reason  to 
believe  that  this  somewhat  extravagant  fashion  is 
based  upon  any  genuine  liking,  or  any  very  wide- 

i  Here  are  some  actual  prices  from  booksellers'  catalogues : 

1914  1916  1920 

Almayer's  Folly  (1895) $12.  $24.  $40. 

An  Outcast  of  the  Islands  (1896)..     11.50  20.  35. 

The  Nigger  of  the  Narcissus  (1898)       7.50  20.  35. 

Tales  of  Unrest  (1898) 12.50  20.  35. 

Lord  Jim  (1900)    7.50  22.50  25. 

The  Inheritors   (1901)    12.  20.  30. 

Youth    (1902)    5.  7.50  25. 

Typhoon  (1903) 4.  5.50  16. 

Romance    (1903)    5.  7.50  9. 

Nostromo   (1904)    2.50  4.50  7.50 

The  Mirror  of  the  Sea  (1906) 5.  11.  15. 

A  Set  of  Six  (1908)   3.  7.50  10. 

Under  Western  Eyes  (1911) 4.50  4.50  6. 

Some  Reminiscences  (1912)    4.50  9.  15. 

Chance    (1913)    2.  5.  15. 

Victory  (1915)    2.  2.50  4.25 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  57 

spread  understanding.  The  truth  is  that,  for  all 
the  adept  tub-thumping  of  publishers,  Conrad's 
sales  still  fall  a  good  deal  behind  those  of  even  the 
most  modest  of  best-seller  manufacturers,  and  that 
the  respect  with  which  his  successive  volumes  are 
received  is  accompanied  by  enthusiasm  in  a  rela 
tively  narrow  circle  only.  A  clan  of  Conrad  fa 
natics  exists,  and  surrounding  it  there  is  a  body  of 
readers  who  read  him  because  it  is  the  intellectual 
thing  to  do,  and  who  talk  of  him  because  talking  of 
him  is  expected.  But  beyond  that  he  seems  to  make 
little  impression.  When  "Victory"  was  printed  in 
Munsey's  Magazine  it  was  a  failure;  no  other  single 
novel,  indeed,  contributed  more  toward  the  aban 
donment  of  the  policy  of  printing  a  complete  novel 
in  each  issue.  The  other  popular  magazines  show 
but  small  inclination  for  Conrad  manuscripts. 
Some  time  ago  his  account  of  a  visit  to  Poland  in 
war-time  was  offered  on  the  American  market  by  an 
English  author's  agent.  At  the  start  a  price  of 
$2,500  was  put  upon  it,  but  after  vainly  inviting 
buyers  for  a  couple  of  months  it  was  finally  dis 
posed  of  to  a  literary  newspaper  which  seldom 
spends  so  much  as  $2,500,  I  daresay,  for  a  whole 
month's  supply  of  copy. 

In  the  United  States,  at  least,  novelists  are  made 
and  unmade,  not  by  critical  majorities,  but  by 


58  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

women,  male  and  female.  The  art  of  fiction 
among  us,  as  Henry  James  once  said,  "is  almost 
exclusively  feminine."  In  the  books  of  such  a 
man  as  William  Dean  Howells  it  is  difficult  to  find 
a  single  line  that  is  typically  and  exclusively  mas 
culine.  One  could  easily  imagine  Edith  Wharton, 
or  Mrs.  Watts,  or  even  Agnes  Repplier,  writing  all 
of  them.  When  a  first-rate  novelist  emerges  from 
obscurity  it  is  almost  always  by  some  fortuitous 
plucking  of  the  dexter  string.  "Sister  Carrie,"  for 
example,  has  made  a  belated  commercial  success, 
not  because  its  dignity  as  a  human  document  is 
understood,  but  because  it  is  mistaken  for  a  sad 
tale  of  amour,  not  unrelated  to  "The  Woman  Thou 
Gavest  Me"  and  "Dora  Thorne."  In  Conrad  there 
is  no  such  sweet  bait  for  the  fair  and  sentimental. 
The  sedentary  multipara,  curled  up  in  her  boudoir 
on  a  rainy  afternoon,  finds  nothing  to  her  taste  in 
his  grim  tales.  The  Conrad  philosophy  is  harsh, 
unyielding,  repellent.  The  Conrad  heroes  are 
nearly  all  boors  and  ruffians.  Their  very  love-mak 
ing  has  something  sinister  and  abhorrent  in  it;  one 
cannot  imagine  them  in  the  moving  pictures,  played 
by  tailored  beauties  with  long  eye-lashes.  More,  I 
venture  that  the  censors  would  object  to  them,  even 
disguised  as  floor-walkers.  Surely  that  would  be 
a  besotted  board  which  would  pass  the  irregular 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  59 

amours  of  Lord  Jim,  the  domestic  brawls  of  Al- 
mayer,  the  revolting  devil's  mass  of  Kurtz,  Falk's 
disgusting  feeding  in  the  Southern  Ocean,  or  the 
butchery  on  Heyst's  island.  Stevenson's  "Treasure 
Island"  has  been  put  upon  the  stage,  but  "An  Out 
cast  of  the  Islands"  would  be  as  impossible  there  as 
"Barry  Lyndon"  or  "La  Terre."  The  world  fails 
to  breed  actors  for  such  roles,  or  stage  managers 
to  penetrate  such  travails  of  the  spirit,  or  audiences 
for  the  revelation  thereof. 

With  the  Conrad  cult,  so  discreetly  nurtured  out 
of  a  Barabbasian  sik),  there  arises  a  considerable 
Conrad  literature,  most  of  it  quite  valueless. 
Huneker's  essay,  in  "Ivory,  Apes  and  Peacocks,"  1 
gets  little  beyond  the  obvious;  William  Lyon 
Phelps,  in  "The  Advance  of  the  English  Novel," 
achieves  only  a  meagre  judgment;  2  Frederic  Taber 
Cooper  tries  to  estimate  such  things  as  "The 
Secret  Agent"  and  "Under  Western  Eyes"  in  terms 
of  the  Harvard  enlightenment;  3  John  Galsworthy 
wastes  himself  upon  futile  comparisons;  4  even  Sir 
Hugh  Clifford,  for  all  his  quick  insight,  makes  ir 
relevant  objections  to  Conrad's  principles  of  Malay 

iNew  York,  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  1915,  pp.  1-21. 

2  New  York,  Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.,  1916,  pp.  192-217. 

3  Some  English  Story  Tellers  a  A  Book  of  the  Younger  Nov 
elists;  New  York,  Henry  Holt  &  Co.,  1912,  pp.  1-30. 

*  A  Disquisition  on  Conrad,  Fortnightly  Review,  April,  1908. 


60  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

psychology.1  Who  cares?  Conrad  is  his  own 
God,  and  creates  his  own  Malay!  The  best  of  the 
existing  studies  of  Conrad,  despite  certain  senti 
mentalities  arising  out  of  youth  and  schooling,  is 
in  the  book  of  Wilson  Follett,  before  mentioned. 
The  worst  is  in  the  official  biography  by  Richard 
Curie,2  for  which  Conrad  himself  obtained  a  pub 
lisher  and  upon  which  his  imprimatur  may  be  thus 
assumed  to  lie.  If  it  does,  then  its  absurdities  are 
nothing  new,  for  we  all  know  what  a  botch  Ibsen 
made  of  accounting  for  himself.  But,  even  so,  the 
assumption  stretches  the  probabilities  more  than 
once.  Surely  it  is  hard  to  think  of  Conrad  put 
ting  "Lord  Jim"  below  "Chance"  and  "The  Secret 
Agent"  on  the  ground  that  it  "raises  a  fierce  moral 
issue."  Nothing,  indeed,  could  be  worse  nonsense 
— save  it  be  an  American  critic's  doctrine  that  "Con 
rad  denounces  pessimism."  "Lord  Jim"  no  more 
raises  a  moral  issue  than  "The  Titan."  It  is,  if 
anything,  a  devastating  exposure  of  a  moral  issue. 
Its  villain  is  almost  heroic;  its  hero,  judged  by  his 
peers,  is  a  scoundrel.  .  .  . 

Hugh  Walpole,  himself  a  competent  novelist,  does 

1  The  Genius  of  Mr.  Joseph  Conrad,  North  American  Re 
view,  June,  1904. 

2  Joseph  Conrad:  A  Study;  New  York,  Doubledaj,  Page  & 
Co., 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  61 

far  better  in  his  little  volume,  "Joseph  Conrad."  * 
In  its  brief  space  he  is  unable  to  examine  all  of  the 
books  in  detail,  but  he  at  least  manages  to  get 
through  a  careful  study  of  Conrad's  method,  and 
his  professional  skill  and  interest  make  it  valuable. 

§7 

There  is  a  notion  that  judgments  of  living  artists 
are  impossible.  They  are  bound  to  be  corrupted, 
we  are  told,  by  prejudice,  false  perspective,  mob 
emotion,  error.  The  question  whether  this  or  that 
man  is  great  or  small  is  one  which  only  posterity 
can  answer.  A  silly  begging  of  the  question,  for 
doesn't  posterity  also  make  mistakes?  Shake 
speare's  ghost  has  seen  two  or  three  posterities, 
beautifully  at  odds.  Even  today,  it  must  notice  a 
difference  in  flitting  from  London  to  Berlin.  The 
shade  of  Milton  has  been  tricked  in  the  same  way. 
So,  also,  has  Johann  Sebastian  Bach's.  It  needed 
a  Mendelssohn  to  rescue  it  from  Coventry — and 
now  Mendelssohn  himself,  once  so  shining  a  light, 
is  condemned  to  the  shadows  in  his  turn.  We  are 
not  dead  yet;  we  are  here,  and  it  is  now.  There 
fore,  let  us  at  least  venture,  guess,  opine. 

My  own  conviction,  sweeping  all  those  reaches  of 

i  Joseph  Conrad;  London,  Nisbet  &  Co.  (1916). 


62  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

living  fiction  that  I  know,  is  that  Conrad's  figure 
stands  out  from  the  field  like  the  Alps  from  the 
Piedmont  plain.  He  not  only  has  no  masters  in  the 
novel;  he  has  scarcely  a  colourable  peer.  Perhaps 
Thomas  Hardy  and  Anatole  France — old  men  both, 
their  work  behind  them.  But  who  else?  James 
is  dead.  Meredith  is  dead.  So  is  George  Moore, 
though  he  lingers  on.  So  are  all  the  Russians  of 
the  first  rank;  Andrieff,  Gorki  and  their  like  are 
light  cavalry.  In  Sudermann,  Germany  has  a 
writer  of  short  stories  of  very  high  calibre,  but 
where  is  the  German  novelist  to  match  Conrad? 
Clara  Viebig?  Thomas  Mann?  Gustav  Frens- 
sen?  Arthur  Schnitzler?  Surely  not!  As  for 
the  Italians,  they  are  either  absurd  tear-squeezers 
or  more  absurd  harlequins.  As  for  the  Spaniards 
and  the  Scandinavians,  they  would  pass  for  gen 
iuses  only  in  Suburbia.  In  America,  setting  aside 
an  odd  volume  here  and  there,  one  can  discern  only 
Dreiser — and  of  Dreiser's  limitations  I  shall  dis 
course  anon.  There  remains  England.  England 
has  the  best  second-raters  in  the  world;  nowhere 
else  is  the  general  level  of  novel  writing  so  high; 
nowhere  else  is  there  a  corps  of  journeyman  novel 
ists  comparable  to  Wells,  Bennett,  Benson,  Walpole, 
Beresford,  George,  Galsworthy,  Hichens,  De  Mor 
gan,  Miss  Sinclair,  Hewlett  and  company.  They 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  63 

have  a  prodigious  facility;  they  know  how  to  write; 
even  the  least  of  them  is,  at  all  events,  a  more  com 
petent  artisan  than,  say,  Dickens,  or  Bulwer-Lytton, 
or  Sienkiewicz,  or  Zola.  But  the  literary  grande 
passion  is  simply  not  in  them.  They  get  nowhere 
with  their  suave  and  interminable  volumes.  Their 
view  of  the  world  and  its  wonders  is  narrow  and 
superficial.  They  are,  at  bottom,  no  more  than 
clever  mechanicians. 

As  Galsworthy  has  said,  Conrad  lifts  himself 
immeasurably  above  them  all.  One  might  well  call 
him,  if  the  term  had  not  been  cheapened  into  cant, 
a  cosmic  artist.  His  mind  works  upon  a  colossal 
scale;  he  conjures  up  the  general  out  of  the  par 
ticular.  What  he  sees  and  describes  in  his  books 
is  not  merely  this  man's  aspiration  or  that  woman's 
destiny,  but  the  overwhelming  sweep  and  devasta 
tion  of  universal  forces,  the  great  central  drama 
that  is  at  the  heart  of  all  other  dramas,  the  tragic 
struggles  of  the  soul  of  man  under  the  gross  stupid 
ity  and  obscene  joking  of  the  gods.  "In  the  novels 
of  Conrad,"  says  Galsworthy,  "nature  is  first,  man 
is  second."  But  not  a  mute,  a  docile  second !  He 
may  think,  as  Walpole  argues,  that  "life  is  too 
strong,  too  clever  and  too  remorseless  for  the  sons 
of  men,"  but  he  does  not  think  that  they  are  too 
weak  and  poor  in  spirit  to  challenge  it.  It  is  the 


64  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

challenging  that  engrosses  him,  and  enchants  him, 
and  raises  up  the  magic  of  his  wonder.  It  is  as 
futile,  in  the  end,  as  Hamlet's  or  Faust's — but  still 
a  gallant  and  a  gorgeous  adventure,  a  game  up 
roariously  worth  the  playing,  an  enterprise  "in 
scrutable  .  .  .  and  excessively  romantic."  .  .  . 

If  you  want  to  get  his  measure,  read  "Youth"  or 
'Talk"  or  "Heart  of  Darkness,"  and  then  try  to 
read  the  best  of  Kipling.  I  think  you  will  come  to 
some  understanding,  by  that  simple  experiment,  of 
the  difference  between  an  adroit  artisan's  bag  of 
tricks  and  the  lofty  sincerity  and  passion  of  a  first- 
rate  artist. 


II.    THEODORE  DREISER 


II 

THEODORE   DREISER 


OUT  of  the  desert  of  American  fictioneering, 
so  populous  and  yet  so  dreary,  Dreiser 
stands  up  —  a  phenomenon  unescapably 
visible,  but  disconcertingly  hard  to  explain.  What 
forces  combined  to  produce  him  in  the  first  place, 
and  how  has  he  managed  to  hold  out  so  long  against 
the  prevailing  blasts  —  of  disheartening  misunder 
standing  and  misrepresentation,  of  Puritan  suspi 
cion  and  opposition,  of  artistic  isolation,  of  com 
mercial  seduction?  There  is  something  downright 
heroic  in  the  way  the  man  has  held  his  narrow  and 
perilous  ground,  disdaining  all  compromise,  un 
moved  by  the  cheap  success  that  lies  so  inviting 
around  the  corner.  He  has  faced,  in  his  day,  al 
most  every  form  of  attack  that  a  serious  artist  can 
conceivably  encounter,  and  yet  all  of  them  together 
have  scarcely  budged  him  an  inch.  He  still  plods 
along  in  the  laborious,  cheerless  way  he  first 
marked  out  for  himself;  he  is  quite  as  undaunted 
by  baited  praise  as  by  bludgeoning,  malignant 

abuse;  his  later  novels  are,  if  anything,  more  un- 

67 


68  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

yieldingly  dreiserian  than  his  earliest.  As  one 
who  has  long  sought  to  entice  him  in  this  direction 
or  that,  fatuously  presuming  to  instruct  him  in  what 
would  improve  him  and  profit  him,  I  may  well  bear 
a  reluctant  and  resigned  sort  of  testimony  to  his 
gigantic  steadfastness.  It  is  almost  as  if  any 
change  in  his  manner,  any  concession  to  what  is 
usual  and  esteemed,  any  amelioration  of  his  blind, 
relentless  exercises  of  force  majeure,  were  a  physi 
cal  impossibility.  One  feels  him  at  last  to  be  au 
thentically  no  more  than  a  helpless  instrument  (or 
victim)  of  that  inchoate  flow  of  forces  which  he  him 
self  is  so  fond  of  depicting  as  at  once  the  answer  to 
the  riddle  of  life,  and  a  riddle  ten  times  more  vex 
ing  and  accursed. 

And  his  origins,  as  I  say,  are  quite  as  mysterious 
as  his  motive  power.  To  fit  him  into  the  unrolling 
chart  of  American,  or  even  of  English  fiction  is  ex 
tremely  difficult.  Save  one  thinks  of  H.  B.  Fuller 
(whose  "With  the  Procession"  and  "The  Cliff- 
Dwellers"  are  still  remembered  by  Huneker,  but  by 
whom  else?  1),  he  seems  to  have  had  no  fore-runner 

i  Fuller's  comparative  obscurity  is  one  of  the  strangest  phe 
nomena  of  American  letters.  Despite  his  high  achievement, 
he  is  seldom  discussed,  or  even  mentioned.  Buck  in  1899  he 
was  already  so  far  forgotten  that  William  Archer  mistook  his 
name,  calling  him  Henry  Y.  Puller.  Vide  Archer's  pamphlet, 
The  American  Language;  New  York,  1899. 


THEODORE  DREISER  69 

among  us,  and  for  all  the  discussion  of  him  that 
goes  on,  he  has  few  avowed  disciples,  and  none  of 
them  gets  within  miles  of  him.  One  catches  echoes 
of  him,  perhaps,  in  Willa  Sibert  Gather,  in  Mary 
S.  Watts,  in  David  Graham  Phillips,  in  Sherwood 
Anderson  and  in  Joseph  Medill  Patterson,  but,  after 
all,  they  are  no  more  than  echoes.  In  Robert  Her- 
rick  the  thing  descends  to  a  feeble  parody;  in  im 
itators  further  removed  to  sheer  burlesque.  All  the 
latter-day  American  novelists  of  consideration  are 
vastly  more  facile  than  Dreiser  in  their  philosophy, 
as  they  are  in  their  style.  In  the  fact,  perhaps,  lies 
the  measure  of  their  difference.  What  they  lack, 
great  and  small,  is  the  gesture  of  pity,  the  note  of 
awe,  the  profound  sense  of  wonder — in  a  phrase, 
that  "soberness  of  mind"  which  William  Lyon 
Phelps  sees  as  the  hallmark  of  Conrad  and  Hardy, 
and  which  even  the  most  stupid  cannot  escape  in 
Dreiser.  The  normal  American  novel,  even  in  its 
most  serious  forms,  takes  colour  from  the  national 
cocksureness  and  superficiality.  It  runs  monoto 
nously  to  ready  explanations,  a  somewhat  infantile 
smugness  and  hopefulness,  a  habit  of  reducing  the 
unknowable  to  terms  of  the  not  worth  knowing. 
What  it  cannot  explain  away  with  ready  formulae, 
as  in  the  later  Winston  Churchill,  it  snickers  over 
as  scarcely  worth  explaining  at  all,  as  in  the  later 


70  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

Howells.  Such  a  brave  and  tragic  book  as  "Ethan 
Frome"  is  so  rare  as  to  be  almost  singular,  even  with 
Mrs.  Wharton.  There  is,  I  daresay,  not  much  mar 
ket  for  that  sort  of  thing.  In  the  arts,  as  in  the 
concerns  of  everyday,  the  American  seeks  escape 
from  the  insoluble  by  pretending  that  it  is  solved. 
A  comfortable  phrase  is  what  he  craves  beyond  all 
things — and  comfortable  phrases  are  surely  not  to 
be  sought  in  Dreiser's  stock. 

I  have  heard  argument  that  he  is  a  follower  of 
Frank  Norris,  and  two  or  three  facts  lend  it  a 
specious  probability.  "McTeague"  was  printed  in 
1899;  "Sister  Carrie"  a  year  later.  Moreover, 
Norris  was  the  first  to  see  the  merit  of  the  latter 
book,  and  he  fought  a  gallant  fight,  as  literary  ad 
visor  to  Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.,  against  its  sup 
pression  after  it  was  in  type.  But  this  theory  runs 
aground  upon  two  circumstances,  the  first  being  that 
Dreiser  did  not  actually  read  "McTeague,"  nor,  in 
deed,  grow  aware  of  Norris,  until  after  "Sister 
Carrie"  was  completed,  and  the  other  being  that 
his  development,  once  he  began  to  write  other  books, 
was  along  paths  far  distant  from  those  pursued  by 
Norris  himself.  Dreiser,  in  truth,  was  a  bigger 
man  than  Norris  from  the  start;  it  is  to  the  latter's 
unending  honour  that  he  recognized  the  fact  in- 
stanter,  and  yet  did  all  he  could  to  help  his  rival. 


THEODORE  DREISER  71 

It  is  imaginable,  of  course,  that  Norris,  living  fifteen 
years  longer,  might  have  overtaken  Dreiser,  and 
even  surpassed  him;  one  finds  an  arrow  pointing 
that  way  in  "Vandover  and  the  Brute"  (not  printed 
until  1914) .  But  it  swings  sharply  around  in  "The 
Epic  of  the  Wheat."  In  the  second  volume  of  that 
incomplete  trilogy,  "The  Pit,"  there  is  an  obvious 
concession  to  the  popular  taste  in  romance ;  the  thing 
is  so  frankly  written  down,  indeed,  that  a  play  has 
been  made  of  it,  and  Broadway  has  applauded  it. 
And  in  "The  Octopus,"  despite  some  excellent  writ 
ing,  there  is  a  descent  to  a  mysticism  so  fantastic 
and  preposterous  that  it  quickly  passes  beyond  seri 
ous  consideration.  Norris,  in  his  day,  swung  even 
lower — for  example,  in  "A  Man's  Woman"  and  in 
some  of  his  short  stories.  He  was  a  pioneer,  per 
haps  only  half  sure  of  the  way  he  wanted  to  go,  and 
the  evil  lures  of  popular  success  lay  all  about  him. 
It  is  no  wonder  that  he  sometimes  seemed  to  lose 
his  direction. 

Emile  Zola  is  another  literary  father  whose 
paternity  grows  dubious  on  examination.  I  once 
printed  an  article  exposing  what  seemed  to  me  to 
be  a  Zolaesque  attitude  of  mind,  and  even  some 
trace  of  the  actual  Zola  manner,  in  "Jennie  Ger- 
hardt";  there  came  from  Dreiser  the  news  that  he 
bad  never  read  a  line  of  Zola,  and  knew  nothing 


72  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

about  his  novels.  Not  a  complete  answer,  of 
course;  the  influence  might  have  been  exerted  at 
second  hand.  But  through  whom?  I  confess  that 
I  am  unable  to  name  a  likely  medium.  The  effects 
of  Zola  upon  Anglo-Saxon  fiction  have  been  almost 
nil;  his  only  avowed  disciple,  George  Moore,  has 
long  since  recanted  and  reformed;  he  has  scarcely 
rippled  the  prevailing  romanticism.  .  .  .  Thomas 
Hardy?  Here,  I  daresay,  we  strike  a  better  scent. 
There  are  many  obvious  likenesses  between  "Tess 
of  the  D'Urbervilles"  and  "Jennie  Gerhardt"  and 
again  between  "Jude  the  Obscure"  and  "Sister 
Carrie."  All  four  stories  deal  penetratingly  and 
poignantly  with  the  essential  tragedy  of  women;  all 
disdain  the  petty,  specious  explanations  of  popular 
fiction;  in  each  one  finds  a  poetical  and  melancholy 
beauty.  Moreover,  Dreiser  himself  confesses  to  an 
enchanted  discovery  of  Hardy  in  1896,  three  years 
before  "Sister  Carrie"  was  begun.  But  it  is  easy 
to  push  such  a  fact  too  hard,  and  to  search  for  like 
nesses  and  parallels  that  are  really  not  there.  The 
truth  is  that  Dreiser's  points  of  contact  with  Hardy 
might  be  easily  matched  by  many  striking  points  of 
difference,  and  that  the  fundamental  ideas  in  their 
novels,  despite  a  common  sympathy,  are  anything 
but  identical.  Nor  does  one  apprehend  any  pon 
derable  result  of  Dreiser's  youthful  enthusiasm  for 


THEODORE  DREISER  73 

Balzac,  which  antedated  his  discovery  of  Hardy  by 
two  years.  He  got  from  both  men  a  sense  of  the 
scope  and  dignity  of  the  novel;  they  taught  him  that 
a  story  might  be  a  good  one,  and  yet  considerably 
more  than  a  story;  they  showed  him  the  essential 
drama  of  the  commonplace.  But  that  they  had 
more  influence  in  forming  his  point  of  view,  or  even 
in  shaping  his  technique,  than  any  one  of  half  a 
dozen  other  gods  of  those  young  days — this  I 
scarcely  find.  In  the  structure  of  his  novels,  and 
in  their  manner  of  approach  to  life  no  less,  they 
call  up  the  work  of  Dostoyevsky  and  Turgenev  far 
more  than  the  work  of  either  of  these  men — but  of 
all  the  Russians  save  Tolstoi  (as  of  Flaubert) 
Dreiser  himself  tells  us  that  he  was  ignorant  until 
ten  years  after  "Sister  Carrie."  In  his  days  of 
preparation,  indeed,  his  reading  was  so  copious  and 
so  disorderly  that  antagonistic  influences  must  have 
well-nigh  neutralized  one  another,  and  so  left  the 
curious  youngster  to  work  out  his  own  method  and 
his  own  philosophy.  Stevenson  went  down  with 
Balzac,  Poe  with  Hardy,  Dumas  fils  with  Tolstoi. 
There  were  even  months  of  delight  in  Sienkiewicz, 
Lew  Wallace  and  E.  P.  Roe !  The  whole  repertory 
of  the  pedagogues  had  been  fought  through  in 
school  and  college:  Dickens,  Thackeray,  Haw 
thorne,  Washington  Irving,  Kingsley,  Scott.  Only 


74  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

Irving  and  Hawthorne  seem  to  have  made  deep  im 
pressions.  "I  used  to  lie  under  a  tree,"  says 
Dreiser,  "and  read  'Twice  Told  Tales'  by  the  hour. 
I  thought  'The  Alhambra'  was  a  perfect  creation, 
and  I  still  have  a  lingering  affection  for  it."  Add 
Bret  Harte,  George  Ebers,  William  Dean  Howells, 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  and  you  have  a  literary 
stew  indeed!  .  .  .  But  for  all  its  bubbling  I  see  a 
far  more  potent  influence  in  the  chance  discovery 
of  Spencer  and  Huxley  at  twenty-three — the  year  of 
choosing!  Who,  indeed,  will  ever  measure  the  ef 
fect  of  those  two  giants  upon  the  young  men  of  that 
era — Spencer  with  his  inordinate  meticulousness, 
his  relentless  pursuit  of  facts,  his  overpowering  syl 
logisms,  and  Huxley  with  his  devastating  agnosti 
cism,  his  insatiable  questionings  of  the  old  axioms, 
above  all,  his  brilliant  style?  Huxley,  it  would 
appear,  has  been  condemned  to  the  scientific  hulks, 
along  with  bores  innumerable  and  unspeakable ;  one 
looks  in  vain  for  any  appreciation  of  him  in  trea 
tises  on  beautiful  letters.1  And  yet  the  man  was  a 

i  For  example,  in  The  Cambridge  History  of  English  Lit 
erature,  which  runs  to  fourteen  large  volumes  and  a  total  of 
nearly  10,000  pages,  Huxley  receives  but  a  page  and  a  quar 
ter  of  notice,  and  his  remarkable  mastery  of  English  is  barely 
mentioned  in  passing.  His  two  debates  with  Gladstone,  in 
which  he  did  some  of  the  best  writing  of  the  century,  are  not 
noticed  at  all. 


THEODORE  DREISER  75 

superb  artist  in  works,  a  master-writer  even  more 
than  a  master-biologist,  one  of  the  few  truly  great 
stylists  that  England  has  produced  since  the  time 
of  Anne.  One  can  easily  imagine  the  effect  of  two 
such  vigorous  and  intriguing  minds  upon  a  youth 
groping  about  for  self -understanding  and  self-ex 
pression.  They  swept  him  clean,  he  tells  us,  of  the 
lingering  faith  of  his  boyhood — a  mediaeval,  Rhen 
ish  Catholicism ; — more,  they  filled  him  with  a  new 
and  eager  curiosity,  an  intense  interest  in  the  life 
that  lay  about  him,  a  desire  to  seek  out  its  hidden 
workings  and  underlying  causes.  A  young  man 
set  afire  by  Huxley  might  perhaps  make  a  very  bad 
novelist,  but  it  is  a  certainty  that  he  could  never 
make  a  sentimental  and  superficial  one.  There  is 
no  need  to  go  further  than  this  single  moving  ad 
venture  to  find  the  genesis  of  Dreiser's  disdain  of 
the  current  platitudes,  his  sense  of  life  as  a  complex 
biological  phenomenon,  only  dimly  comprehended, 
and  his  tenacious  way  of  thinking  things  out,  and 
of  holding  to  what  he  finds  good.  Ah,  that  he  had 
learned  from  Huxley,  not  only  how  to  inquire,  but 
also  how  to  report!  That  he  had  picked  up  a 
talent  for  that  dazzling  style,  so  sweet  to  the  ear,  so 
damnably  persuasive,  so  crystal-clear! 

But  the  more  one  examines  Dreiser,  either  as 
writer  or  as  theorist  of  man,  the  more  his  essential 


76  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

isolation  becomes  apparent.  He  got  a  habit  of 
mind  from  Huxley,  but  he  completely  missed  Hux 
ley's  habit  of  writing.  He  got  a  view  of  woman 
from  Hardy,  but  he  soon  changed  it  out  of  all  re 
semblance.  He  got  a  certain  fine  ambition  and 
gusto  out  of  Balzac,  but  all  that  was  French  and 
characteristic  he  left  behind.  So  with  Zola,  How- 
ells,  Tolstoi  and  the  rest.  The  tracing  of  likenesses 
quickly  becomes  rabbinism,  almost  cabalism.  The 
differences  are  huge  and  sprout  up  in  all  directions. 
Nor  do  I  see  anything  save  a  flaming  up  of  colonial 
passion  in  the  current  efforts  to  fit  him  into  a  Ger 
man  frame,  and  make  him  an  agent  of  Prussian 
frightfulness  in  letters.  Such  childish  gabble  one 
looks  for  in  the  New  York  Times,  and  there  is 
where  one  actually  finds  it.  Even  the  literary 
monthlies  have  stood  clear  of  it;  it  is  important  only 
as  material  for  that  treatise  upon  the  patrioteer  and 
his  bawling  which  remains  to  be  written.  The 
name  of  the  man,  true  enough,  is  obviously  Ger 
manic,  and  he  has  told  us  himself,  in  "A  Traveler 
at  Forty,"  how  he  sought  out  and  found  the  tombs 
of  his  ancestors  in  some  little  town  of  the  Rhine 
country.  There  are  more  of  these  genealogical 
revelations  in  "A  Hoosier  Holiday,"  but  they  show 
a  Rhenish  strain  that  was  already  running  thin  in 
boyhood.  No  one,  indeed,  who  reads  a  Dreiser 


THEODORE  DREISER  77 

novel  can  fail  to  see  the  gap  separating  the  author 
from  these  half-forgotten  forbears.  He  shows 
even  less  of  German  influence  than  of  English  in 
fluence. 

There  is,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  little  in  modern 
German  fiction  that  is  intelligibly  comparable  to 
"Jennie  Gerhardt"  and  "The  Titan,"  either  as  a 
study  of  man  or  as  a  work  of  art.  The  naturalistic 
movement  of  the  eighties  was  launched  by  men 
whose  eyes  were  upon  the  theatre,  and  it  is  in  that 
field  that  nine-tenths  of  its  force  has  been  spent. 
"German  naturalism,"  says  George  Madison  Priest, 
quoting  Gotthold  Klee's  "Grunzuge  der  deutschen 
Literaturgeschichte"  "created  a  new  type  only  in 
the  drama."  *  True  enough,  it  has  also  produced 
occasional  novels,  and  some  of  them  are  respectable. 
Gustav  Frenssen's  "Jorn  Uhl"  is  a  specimen :  it  has 
been  done  into  English.  Another  is  Clara  Viebig's 
"Das  tagliche  Brot,"  which  Ludwig  Lewisohn  com 
pares  to  George  Moore's  "Esther  Waters."  Yet 
another  is  Thomas  Mann's  "Buddenbrooks."  But 
it  would  be  absurd  to  cite  these  works  as  evidences 
of  a  national  quality,  and  doubly  absurd  to  think 
of  them  as  inspiring  such  books  as  "Jennie  Ger 
hardt"  and  "The  Titan,"  which  excel  them  in  every- 

iA  Brief  History  of  German  Literature;  New  York,  Chas. 
Scribner's  Sons,  1909. 


78  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

thing  save  workmanship.  The  case  of  Mann  re 
veals  a  tendency  that  is  visible  in  nearly  all  of  his 
contemporaries.  Starting  out  as  an  agnostic  real 
ist  not  unlike  the  Arnold  Bennett  of  "The  Old 
Wives'  Tale,"  he  has  gradually  taken  on  a  hesitating 
sort  of  romanticism,  and  in  one  of  his  later  books, 
"Konigliche  Hoheit"  (in  English,  "Royal  High 
ness")  he  ends  upon  a  note  of  sentimentalism  bor 
rowed  from  Wagner's  "Ring."  Fraulein  Viebig  has 
also  succumbed  to  banal  and  extra-artistic  purposes. 
Her  "Die  Wacht  am  Rhein,"  for  all  its  merits  in  de 
tail,  is,  at  bottom,  no  more  than  an  eloquent  hymn 
to  patriotism — a  theme  which  almost  always  baf 
fles  novelists.  As  for  Frenssen,  he  is  a  parson  by 
trade,  and  carries  over  into  the  novel  a  good  deal 
of  the  windy  moralizing  of  the  pulpit.  All  of  these 
German  naturalists — and  they  are  the  only  German 
novelists  worth  considering — share  the  weakness  of 
Zola,  their  Stammvater.  They,  too,  fall  into  the 
morass  that  engulfed  "Fecondite,"  and  make  senti 
mental  propaganda. 

I  go  into  this  matter  in  detail,  not  because  it  is 
intrinsically  of  any  moment,  but  because  the  effort 
to  depict  Dreiser  as  a  secret  agent  of  the  Wilhelm- 
strasse,  told  off  to  inject  subtle  doses  of  Kultur  into 
a  naive  and  pious  people,  has  taken  on  the  propor 
tions  of  an  organized  movement.  The  same  critical 


THEODORE  DREISER  79 

imbecility  which  detects  naught  save  a  Tom  cat  in 
Frank  Cowperwood  can  find  naught  save  an  abhor 
rent  foreigner  in  Cowperwood's  creator.  The 
truth  is  that  the  trembling  patriots  of  letters,  male 
and  female,  are  simply  at  their  old  game  of  seeing 
a  man  under  the  bed.  Dreiser,  in  fact,  is  densely 
ignorant  of  German  literature,  as  he  is  of  the  bet 
ter  part  of  French  literature,  and  of  much  of  Eng 
lish  literature.  He  did  not  even  read  Hauptmann 
until  after  "Jennie  Gerhardt"  had  been  written, 
and  such  typical  German  moderns  as  Ludwig 
Thoma,  Otto  Julius  Bierbaum  and  Richard  Dehmel 
remain  as  strange  to  him  as  Heliogabalus. 

§2 

In  his  manner,  as  opposed  to  his  matter,  he 
is  more  the  Teuton,  for  he  shows  all  of  the  racial 
patience  and  pertinacity  and  all  of  the  racial  lack 
of  humour.  Writing  a  novel  is  as  solemn  a  busi 
ness  to  him  as  trimming  a  beard  is  to  a  German 
barber.  He  blasts  his  way  through  his  intermi 
nable  stories  by  something  not  unlike  main  strength; 
his  writing,  one  feels,  often  takes  on  the  character 
of  an  actual  siege  operation,  with  tunnellings,  drum 
fire,  assaults  in  close  order  and  hand-to-hand  fight 
ing.  Once,  seeking  an  analogy,  I  called  him  the 


80  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

Hindenburg  of  the  novel.  If  it  holds,  then  "The 
'Genius'  "  is  his  Poland.  The  field  of  action  bears 
the  aspect,  at  the  end,  of  a  hostile  province  meticu 
lously  brought  under  the  yoke,  with  every  road  and 
lane  explored  to  its  beginning,  and  every  cross 
roads  village  laboriously  taken,  inventoried  and 
policed.  Here  is  the  very  negation  of  Gallic  light 
ness  and  intuition,  and  of  all  other  forms  of  im 
pressionism  as  well.  Here  is  no  series  of  illuminat 
ing  flashes,  but  a  gradual  bathing  of  the  whole  scene 
with  white  light,  so  that  every  detail  stands  out. 

And  many  of  those  details,  of  course,  are  trivial; 
even  irritating.  They  do  not  help  the  picture;  they 
muddle  and  obscure  it;  one  wonders  impatiently 
what  their  meaning  is,  and  what  the  purpose  may 
be  of  revealing  them  with  such  a  precise,  portentous 
air.  .  .  .  Turn  to  page  703  of  "The  'Genius.'  " 
By  the  time  one  gets  there,  one  has  hewn  and  hacked 
one's  way  through  702  large  pages  of  fine  print 
— 97  long  chapters,  more  than  250,000  words. 
And  yet,  at  this  hurried  and  impatient  point,  with 
the  coda  already  begun,  Dreiser  halts  the  whole  nar 
rative  to  explain  the  origin,  nature  and  inner  mean 
ing  of  Christian  Science,  and  to  make  us  privy  to 
a  lot  of  chatty  stuff  about  Mrs.  Althea  Jones,  a  pro 
fessional  healer,  and  to  supply  us  with  detailed 
plans  and  specifications  of  the  apartment  house  in 


THEODORE  DREISER  81 

which  she  lives,  works  her  tawdry  miracles,  and  has 
her  being.  Here,  in  sober  summary,  are  the  par 
ticulars: 

1.  That  the  house  is  "of  conventional  design." 

2.  That   there   is    "a   spacious    areaway"   between    its   two 
wings. 

3.  That  these  wings  are  "of  cream-coloured  pressed  brick." 

4.  That  the  entrance  between  them  is  "protected  by  a  hand 
some  wrought-iron  door." 

5.  That  to  either  side  of  this  door  is  "an  electric  lamp  sup 
port  of  handsome  design." 

6.  That  in  each  of  these  lamp  supports  there  are  "lovely 
cream-coloured  globes,  shedding  a  soft  lustre." 

7.  That  inside  is  "the  usual  lobby." 

8.  That  in  the  lobby  is  "the  usual  elevator." 

9.  That  in  the  elevator  is  the  usual  "uniformed  negro  ele 
vator  man." 

10.  That  this  negro  elevator  man  (name  not  given)  is  "in 
different  and  impertinent." 

11.  That  a  telephone  switchboard  is  also  in  the  lobby. 

12.  That  the  building  is  seven  stories  in  height. 

In  "The  Financier"  there  is  the  same  exasperat 
ing  rolling  up  of  irrelevant  facts.  The  court  pro 
ceedings  in  the  trial  of  Cowperwood  are  given  with 
all  the  exactness  of  a  parliamentary  report  in  the 
London  Times.  The  speeches  of  the  opposing 
counsel  are  set  down  nearly  in  full,  and  with  them 
the  remarks  of  the  judge,  and  after  that  the  opinion 
of  the  Appellate  Court  on  appeal,  with  the  dissenting 
opinions  as  a  sort  of  appendix.  In  "Sister  Carrie" 
the  thing  is  less  savagely  carried  out,  but  that  is 


82 A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

not  Dreiser's  fault,  for  the  manuscript  was  revised 
by  some  anonymous  hand,  and  the  printed  version 
is  but  little  more  than  half  the  length  of  the  original. 
In  "The  Titan"  and  "Jennie  Gerhardt"  no  such 
brake  upon  exuberance  is  visible;  both  books  are 
crammed  with  details  that  serve  no  purpose,  and 
are  as  flat  as  ditch-water.  Even  in  the  two  volumes 
of  personal  record,  "A  Traveler  at  Forty"  and  "A 
Hoosier  Holiday,"  there  is  the  same  furious  accu 
mulation  of  trivialities.  Consider  the  former.  It 
is  without  structure,  without  selection,  without  reti 
cence.  One  arises  from  it  as  from  a  great  babbling, 
half  drunken.  On  the  one  hand  the  author  fills  a 
long  and  gloomy  chapter  with  the  story  of  the 
Borgias,  apparently  under  the  impression  that  it  is 
news,  and  on  the  other  hand  he  enters  into  intimate 
and  inconsequential  confidences  about  all  the  per 
sons  he  meets  en  route,  sparing  neither  the  innocent 
nor  the  obscure.  The  children  of  his  English  host 
at  Bridgely  Level  strike  him  as  fantastic  little  crea 
tures,  even  as  a  bit  uncanny — and  he  duly  sets  it 
down.  He  meets  an  Englishman  on  a  French  train 
who  pleases  him  much,  and  the  two  become  good 
friends  and  see  Rome  together,  but  the  fellow's  wife 
is  "obstreperous"  and  "haughty  in  her  manner"  and 
so  "loud-spoken  in  her  opinions"  that  she  is  "really 
offensive" — and  down  it  goes.  He  makes  an  im- 


THEODORE  DREISER  83 

pression  on  a  Mile.  Marcelle  in  Paris,  and  she  ac 
companies  him  from  Monte  Carlo  to  Ventimiglia, 
and  there  gives  him  a  parting  kiss  and  whispers, 
" Avril-F ontainebleau" — and  lo,  this  sweet  one  is 
duly  spread  upon  the  minutes.  He  permits  himself 
to  be  arrested  by  a  fair  privateer  in  Piccadilly,  and 
goes  with  her  to  one  of  the  dens  of  sin  that  suf 
fragettes  see  in  their  nightmares,  and  cross-examines 
her  at  length  regarding  her  ancestry,  her  profes 
sional  ethics  and  ideals,  and  her  earnings  at  her 
dismal  craft — and  into  the  book  goes  a  full  report 
of  the  proceedings.  He  is  entertained  by  an  emi 
nent  Dutch  jurist  in  Amsterdam — and  upon  the 
pages  of  the  chronicle  it  appears  that  the  gentleman 
is  "waxy"  and  "a  little  pedantic,"  and  that  he  is 
probably  the  sort  of  "thin,  delicate,  well  barbered" 
professor  that  Ibsen  had  in  mind  when  he  cast  about 
for  a  husband  for  the  daughter  of  General  Gabler. 
Such  is  the  art  of  writing  as  Dreiser  understands 
it  and  practises  it — an  endless  piling  up  of  min 
utiae,  an  almost  ferocious  tracking  down  of  ions, 
electrons  and  molecules,  an  unshakable  determina 
tion  to  tell  it  all.  One  is  amazed  by  the  mole-like 
diligence  of  the  man,  and  no  less  by  his  exasperat 
ing  disregard  for  the  ease  of  his  readers.  A 
Dreiser  novel,  at  least  of  the  later  canon,  cannot  be 
read  as  other  novels  are  read — on  a  winter  evening 


84  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

or  summer  afternoon,  between  meal  and  meal, 
travelling  from  New  York  to  Boston.  It  demands 
the  attention  for  almost  a  week,  and  uses  up  the 
faculties  for  a  month.  If,  reading  "The  'Genius,' ' 
one  were  to  become  engrossed  in  the  fabulous  man 
ner  described  in  the  publishers'  advertisements,  and 
so  find  oneself  unable  to  put  it  down  and  go  to 
bed  before  the  end,  one  would  get  no  sleep  for  three 
days  and  three  nights. 

Worse,  there  are  no  charms  of  style  to  mitigate 
the  rigours  of  these  vast  steppes  and  pampas  of 
narration.  Joseph  Joubert's  saying  that  "words 
should  stand  out  well  from  the  paper"  is  quite  in 
comprehensible  to  Dreiser;  he  never  imitates  Flau 
bert  by  writing  for  "la  respiration  et  Voreille" 
There  is  no  painful  groping  for  the  inevitable  word, 
or  for  what  Walter  Pater  called  "the  gipsy  phrase" ; 
the  common,  even  the  commonplace,  coin  of  speech 
is  good  enough.  On  the  first  page  of  "Jennie  Ger- 
hardt"  one  encounters  "frank,  open  countenance," 
"diffident  manner,"  "helpless  poor,"  "untutored 
mind,"  "honest  necessity,"  and  half  a  dozen  other 
stand-bys  of  the  second-rate  newspaper  reporter. 
In  "Sister  Carrie"  one  finds  "high  noon,"  "hurry 
ing  throng,"  "unassuming  restaurant,"  "dainty 
slippers,"  "high-strung  nature,"  and  "cool,  calculat- 


THEODORE  DREISER  85 

ing  world" — all  on  a  few  pages.  Carrie's  sister, 
Minnie  Hanson,  "gets"  the  supper.  Hanson  him 
self  is  "wrapped  up"  in  his  child.  Carrie  decides 
to  enter  Storm  and  King's  office,  "no  matter  what." 
In  "The  Titan"  the  word  "trig"  is  worked  to  death; 
it  takes  on,  toward  the  end,  the  character  of  a  banal 
and  preposterous  refrain.  In  the  other  books  one 
encounters  mates  for  it — words  made  to  do  duty 
in  as  many  senses  as  the  American  verb  "to  fix"  or 
the  journalistic  "to  secure."  .  .  . 

I  often  wonder  if  Dreiser  gets  anything  properly 
describable  as  pleasure  out  of  this  dogged  accumu 
lation  of  threadbare,  undistinguished,  uninspiring 
nouns,  adjectives,  verbs,  adverbs,  pronouns,  par 
ticiples  and  conjunctions.  To  the  man  with  an  ear 
for  verbal  delicacies — the  man  who  searches  pain 
fully  for  the  perfect  word,  and  puts  the  way  of  say 
ing  a  thing  above  the  thing  said — there  is  in  writing 
the  constant  joy  of  sudden  discovery,  of  happy  ac 
cident.  A  phrase  springs  up  full  blown,  sweet  and 
caressing.  But  what  joy  can  there  be  in  rolling 
up  sentences  that  have  no  more  life  and  beauty  in 
them,  intrinsically,  than  so  many  election  bulletins? 
Where  is  the  thrill  in  the  manufacture  of  such  a 
paragraph  as  that  in  which  Mrs.  Althea  Jones' 
sordid  habitat  is  described  with  such  inexorable  par- 


86  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

ticularity?  Or  in  the  laborious  confection  of 
such  stuff  as  this,  from  Book  I,  Chapter  IV,  of  "The 
'Genius'"?: 

The  city  of  Chicago — who  shall  portray  it!  This  vast  ruck 
of  life  that  had  sprung  suddenly  into  existence  upon  the  dank 
marshes  of  a  lake  shore! 

Or  this  from  the  epilogue  to  "The  Financier"; 

There  is  a  certain  fish  whose  scientific  name  isjttycteroperca 
Bonaci,  and  whose  common  name  is  Black  Grouper,  which  is 
of  considerable  value  as  an  afterthought  in  this  connection, 
and  which  deserves  much  to  be  better  known.  It  is  a  healthy 
creature,  growing  quite  regularly  to  a  weight  of  two  hundred 
and  fifty  pounds,  and  living  a  comfortable,  lengthy  existence 
because  of  its  very  remarkable  ability  to  adapt  itself  to  con 
ditions.  .  .  . 

Or  this  from  his  pamphlet,  "Life,  Art  and  Amer 
ica":  1 

Alas,  alas!  for  art  in  America.  It  has  a  hard  stubby  row 
to  hoe. 

But  I  offer  no  more  examples.  Every  reader  of 
the  Dreiser  novels  must  cherish  astounding  speci 
mens — of  awkward,  platitudinous  marginalia,  of 
whole  scenes  spoiled  by  bad  writing,  of  phrases  as 
brackish  as  so  many  lumps  of  sodium  hyposulphite. 
Here  and  there,  as  in  parts  of  "The  Titan"  and 
again  in  parts  of  "A  Hoosier  Holiday,"  an  evil 

iNew  York,  1917;  reprinted  from  The  Seven  Arts  for  Feb., 
1917. 


THEODORE  DREISER  87 

conscience  seems  to  haunt  him  and  he  gives  hard 
striving  to  his  manner,  and  more  than  once  there 
emerges  something  that  is  almost  graceful.  But 
a  backsliding  always  follows  this  phosphorescence 
of  reform.  "The  'Genius,'  "  coming  after  "The 
Titan,"  marks  the  high  tide  of  his  bad  writing. 
There  are  passages  in  it  so  clumsy,  so  inept,  so  ir 
ritating  that  they  seem  almost  unbelievable ;  nothing 
worse  is  to  be  found  in  the  newspapers.  Nor  is 
there  any  compensatory  deftness  in  structure,  or 
solidity  of  design,  to  make  up  for  this  carelessness 
in  detail.  The  well-made  novel,  of  course,  can  be 
as  hollow  as  the  well-made  play  of  Scribe — but  let 
us  at  least  have  a  beginning,  a  middle  and  an  end! 
Such  a  story  as  "The  'Genius'  "  is  as  gross  and 
shapeless  as  Briinnhilde.  It  billows  and  bulges  out 
like  a  cloud  of  smoke,  and  its  internal  organization 
is  almost  as  vague.  There  are  episodes  that,  with 
a  few  chapters  added,  would  make  very  respectable 
novels.  There  are  chapters  that  need  but  a  touch  or 
two  to  be  excellent  short  stories.  The  thing  ram 
bles,  staggers',  trips,  heaves,  pitches,  struggles,  tot 
ters,  wavers,  halts,  turns  aside,  trembles  on  the  edge 
of  collapse.  More  than  once  it  seems  to  be  foun 
dering,  both  in  the  equine  and  in  the  maritime 
senses.  The  tale  has  been  heard  of  a  tree  so  tall 
that  it  took  two  men  to  see  to  the  top  of  it.  Here 


it 


88  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

is  a  novel  so  brobdingnagian  that  a  single  reader 
can  scarcely  read  his  way  through  it.  ... 

§3 

Of  the  general  ideas  which  lie  at  the  bottom  of 
all  of  Dreiser's  work  it  is  impossible  to  be  in  igno 
rance,  for  he  has  exposed  them  at  length  in  "A 
Hoosier  Holiday"  and  summarized  them  in  "Life, 
Art  and  America."  In  their  main  outlines  they  are 
not  unlike  the  fundamental  assumptions  of  Joseph 
Conrad.  Both  novelists  see  human  existence  as  a 
seeking  without  a  rinding;  both  reject  the  prevailing 
interpretations  of  its  meaning  and  mechanism ;  both 
take  refuge  in  "I  do  not  know."  Put  "A  Hoosier 
Holiday"  beside  Conrad's  "A  Personal  Record," 
and  you  will  come  upon  parallels  from  end  to  end. 
Or  better  still,  put  it  beside  Hugh  Walpole's  "Joseph 
Conrad,"  in  which  the  Conradean  metaphysic  is 
condensed  from  the  novels  even  better  than  Con 
rad  has  done  it  himself:  at  once  you  will  see  how 
the  two  novelists,  each  a  worker  in  the  elemental 
emotions,  each  a  rebel  against  the  current  assur 
ance  and  superficiality,  each  an  alien  to  his  place 
and  time,  touch  each  other  in  a  hundred  ways. 

"Conrad,"  says  Walpole,  "is  of  the  firm  and 
resolute  conviction  that  life  is  too  strong,  too  clever 


THEODORE  DREISER  89 

and  too  remorseless  for  the  sons  of  men."  And 
then,  in  amplification:  "It  is  as  though,  from 
some  high  window,  looking  down,  he  were  able  to 
watch  some  shore,  from  whose  security  men  were 
forever  launching  little  cockleshell  boats  upon  a 
limitless  and  angry  sea.  .  .  .  From  his  height  he 
can  follow  their  fortunes,  their  brave  struggles, 
their  fortitude  to  the  very  end.  He  admires  their 
courage,  the  simplicity  of  their  faith,  but  his  irony 
springs  from  his  knowledge  of  the  inevitable 
end."  .  .  . 

Substitute  the  name  of  Dreiser  for  that  of  Con 
rad,  and  you  will  have  to  change  scarcely  a  word. 
•Perhaps  one,  to  wit,  "clever."  I  suspect  that 
Dreiser,  writing  so  of  his  own  creed,  would  be 
tempted  to  make  it  "stupid,"  or,  at  all  events,  "un 
intelligible."  The  struggle  of  man,  as  he  sees  it, 
is  more  than  impotent;  it  is  gratuitous  and  purpose 
less.  There  is,  to  his  eye,  no  grand  ingenuity,  no 
skilful  adaptation  of  means  to  end,  no  moral  (or 
even  dramatic)  plan  in  the  order  of  the  universe. 
He  can  get  out  of  it  only  a  sense  of  profound  and 
inexplicable  disorder.  The  waves  which  batter  the 
cockleshells  change  their  direction  at  every  instant. 
Their  navigation  is  a  vast  adventure,  but  intolerably 
fortuitous  and  inept — a  voyage  without  chart,  com 
pass,  sun  or  stars.  .  .  . 


90  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

So  at  bottom.  But  to  look  into  the  blackness 
steadily,  of  course,  is  almost  beyond  the  endurance 
of  man.  In  the  very  moment  that  its  impenetra 
bility  is  grasped  the  imagination  begins  attacking 
it  with  pale  beams  of  false  light.  All  religions,  I 
daresay,  are  thus  projected  from  the  questioning 
soul  of  man,  and  not  only  all  religious,  but  also 
all  great  agnosticisms.  Nietzsche,  shrinking  from 
the  horror  of  that  abyss  of  negation,  revived  the 
Pythagorean  concept  of  der  ewigen  Wiederkunft — 
a  vain  and  blood-curdling  sort  of  comfort.  To  it, 
after  a  while,  he  added  explanations  almost  Chris 
tian — a  whole  repertoire  of  whys  and  wherefores, 
aims  and  goals,  aspirations  and  significances.  The* 
late  Mark  Twain,  in  an  unpublished  work,  toyed 
with  a  equally  daring  idea:  that  men  are  to  some 
unimaginably  vast  and  incomprehensible  Being 
what  the  unicellular  organisms  of  his  body  are  to 
man,  and  so  on  ad  infinitum.  Dreiser  occasion 
ally  inclines  to  much  the  same  hypothesis;  he  likens 
the  endless  reactions  going  on  in  the  world  we 
know,  the  myriadal  creation,  collision  and  destruc 
tion  of  entities,  to  the  slow  accumulation  and  or 
ganization  of  cells  in  utero.  He  would  make  us 
specks  in  the  insentient  embryo  of  some  gigantic 
Presence  whose  form  is  still  unimaginable  and 
whose  birth  must  wait  for  Eons  and  Eons.  Again, 


THEODORE  DREISER  91 

he  turns  to  something  not  easily  distinguishable 
from  philosophical  idealism,  whether  out  of  Berke 
ley  or  Fichte  it  is  hard  to  make  out — that  is,  he 
would  interpret  the  whole  phenomenon  of  life  as 
10  more  than  an  appearance,  a  nightmare  of  some 
unseen  sleeper  or  of  men  themselves,  an  "uncanny 
blur  of  nothingness" — in  Euripides'  phrase,  "a 
song  sung  by  an  idiot,  dancing  down  the  wind." 
Yet  again,  he  talks  vaguely  of  the  intricate  poly 
phony  of  a  cosmic  orchestra,  cacophonous  to  our 
dull  ears.  Finally,  he  puts  the  observed  into  the 
ordered,  reading  a  purpose  in  the  displayed  event: 
"life  was  intended  to  sting  and  hurt"  .  .  .  But 
these  are  only  gropings,  and  not  to  be  read  too 
critically.  From  speculations  and  explanations  he 
always  returns,  Conrad-like,  to  the  bald  fact:  to 
"the  spectacle  and  stress  of  life."  All  he  can  make 
out  clearly  is  "a  vast  compulsion  which  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  individual  desires  or  tastes  or  im 
pulses  of  individuals."  That  compulsion  springs 
"from  the  settling  processes  of  forces  which  we  do 
not  in  the  least  understand,  over  which  we  have  no 
control,  and  in  whose  grip  we  are  as  grains  of  dust 
or  sand,  blown  hither  and  thither,  for  what  pur 
pose  we  cannot  even  suspect."  1  Man  is  not  only 
doomed  to  defeat,  but  denied  any  glimpse  or  un- 

1  Life,  Art  and  America,  p.  5. 


92  'A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

derstanding  of  his  antagonist.  Here  we  come 
upon  an  agnosticism  that  has  almost  got  beyond 
curiosity.  What  good  would  it  do  us,  asks  Dreiser, 
to  know?  In  our  ignorance  and  helplessness,  we 
may  at  least  get  a  slave's  consolation  out  of  cursing 
the  unknown  gods.  Suppose  we  saw  them  striving 
blindly,  too,  and  pitied  them?  .  .  . 

But,  as  I  say,  this  scepticism  is  often  tempered 
by  guesses  at  a  possibly  hidden  truth,  and  the  con 
fession  that  this  truth  may  exist  reveals  the  prac 
tical  unworkableness  of  the  unconditioned  system, 
at  least  for  Dreiser.  Conrad  is  far  more  resolute, 
and  it  is  easy  to  see  why.  He  is,  by  birth  and 
training,  an  aristocrat.  He  has  the  gift  of  emo 
tional  detachment.  The  lures  of  facile  doctrine 
do  not  move  him.  In  his  irony  there  is  a  disdain 
which  plays  about  even  the  ironist  himself. 
Dreiser  is  a  product  of  far  different  forces  and 
traditions,  and  is  capable  of  no  such  escapement. 
Struggle  as  he  may,  and  fume  and  protest  as  he 
may,  he  can  no  more  shake  off  the  chains  of  his  in 
tellectual  and  cultural  heritage  than  he  can  change 
the  shape  of  his  nose.  What  that  heritage  is  you 
may  find  out  in  detail  by  reading  "A  Hoosier  Holi 
day,"  or  in  summary  by  glancing  at  the  first  few 
pages  of  "Life,  Art  and  America."  Briefly  de 
scribed,  it  is  the  burden  of  a  believing  mind,  a 


THEODORE  DREISER  93 

moral  attitude,  a  lingering  superstition.  One-half 
of  the  man's  brain,  so  to  speak,  wars  with  the  other 
half.  He  is  intelligent,  he  is  thoughtful,  he  is  a 
sound  artist — but  there  come  moments  when  a  dead 
hand  falls  upon  him,  and  he  is  once  more  the  In 
diana  peasant,  snuffing  absurdly  over  imbecile  sen 
timentalities,  giving  a  grave  ear  to  quackeries, 
snorting  and  eye-rolling  with  the  best  of  them. 
One  generation  spans  too  short  a  time  to  free  the 
soul  of  man.  Nietzsche,  to  the  end  of  his  days, 
remained  a  Prussian  pastor's  son,  and  hence  two- 
thirds  a  Puritan;  he  erected  his  war  upon  holiness, 
toward  the  end,  into  a  sort  of  holy  war.  Kipling, 
the  grandson  of  a  Methodist  preacher,  reveals  the 
tin-pot  evangelist  with  increasing  clarity  as  youth 
and  its  ribaldries  pass  away  and  he  falls  back  upon  ~ 
his  fundamentals.  And  that  other  English  novelist  \ 
who  springs  from  the  servants'  hall — let  us  not  be 
surprised  or  blame  him  if  he  sometimes  writes  like  J 
a  bounder. 

The  truth  about  Dreiser  is  that  he  is  still  in  the 
transition  stage  between  Christian  Endeavour  and 
civilization,  between  Warsaw,  Indiana  and  the 
Socratic  grove,  between  being  a  good  American  and 
being  a  free  man,  and  so  he  sometimes  vacillates 
perilously  between  a  moral  sentimentalism  and  a 
somewhat  extravagant  revolt.  "The  'Genius,'  "  on 


94  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

the  one  hand,  is  almost  a  tract  for  rectitude,  a 
Warning  to  the  Young;  its  motto  might  be  Scheut 
die  Dirnen!  And  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  full  of  a 
laborious  truculence  that  can  only  be  explained 
by  imagining  the  author  as  heroically  determined 
to  prove  that  he  is  a  plain-spoken  fellow  and  his 
own  man,  let  the  chips  fall  where  they  may.  So, 
in  spots,  in  "The  Financier"  and  "The  Titan,"  both 
of  them  far  better  books.  There  is  an  almost  moral 
frenzy  to  expose  and  riddle  what  passes  for  mor 
ality  among  the  stupid.  The  isolation  of  irony  is 
never  reached;  the  man  is  still  evangelical;  his 
\  ideas  are  still  novelties  to  him;  he  is  as  solemnly 
absurd  in  some  of  his  floutings  of  the  Code  Ameri- 
icain  as  he  is  in  his  respect  for  Bouguereau,  or  in 
his  flirtings  with  the  New  Thought,  or  in  his  naive 
belief  in  the  importance  of  novel-writing.  Some 
where  or  other  I  have  called  all  this  the  Greenwich 
Village  complex.  It  is  not  genuine  artists,  serving 
beauty  reverently  and  proudly,  who  herd  in  those 
cockroached  cellars  and  bawl  for  art;  it  is  a  mob 
of  half-educated  yokels  and  cockneys  to  whom  the 
very  idea  of  art  is  still  novel,  and  intoxicating — 
and  more  than  a  little  bawdy. 

Not  that  Dreiser  actually  belongs  to  this  raga 
muffin  company.     Far  from  it,  indeed. There  is 

fo  him,  hidden  deep-down,  a  ^reat  instinctive  artist, 


THEODORE  DREISER  95 

.and  hence  the  makings  of  an  aristocrat.  In  his 
muddled  way,  held  back  by  the  manacles  of  his 
race  and  time,  and  his  steps  made  uncertain  by  a 
guiding  theory  which  too  often  eludes  his  own  com 
prehension,  he  yet  manages  to  produce  works  of 
art  of  unquestionable  beauty  and  authority,  and  to 
interpret  life  in  a  manner  that  is  poignant  and 
illuminating.  There  is  vastly  more  intuition  in 
him  than  intellectualism;  his  talent  is  essentially 
feminine,  as  Conrad's  is  masculine;  his  ideas  al 
ways  seem  to  be  deduced  from  his  feelings.  The 
view  of  life  that  got  into  "Sister  Carrie,"  his  first 
book,  was  not  the  product  of  a  conscious  thinking 
out  of  Carrie's  problems.  It  simply  got  itself  there 
by  the  force  of  the  artistic  passion  behind  it;  its 
coherent  statement  had  to  wait  for  other  and  more 
reflective  days.  The  thing  began  as  a  vision,  not 
as  a  syllogism.  Here  the  name  of  Franz  Schubert  \ 
inevitably  comes  up.  Schubert  was  an  ignoramus,  J 
even  in  music;  he  knew  less  about  polyphony,  whichC 
is  the  mother  of  harmony,  which  is  the  mother) 
of  music,  than  the  average  conservatory  profesy 
sor.  But  nevertheless  he  had  such  a  vast  instinc 
tive  sensitiveness  to  musical  values,  such  a  pro 
found  and  accurate  feeling  for  beauty  in  tone,  that 
he  not  only  arrived  at  the  truth  in  tonal  relations,  but 
even  went  beyond  what,  in  his  day,  was  known  to 


96  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

be  the  truth,  and  so  led  an  advance.  Likewise, 
Giorgione  da  Castelfranco  and  Masaccio  come  to 
mind:  painters  of  the  first  rank,  but  untutored,  un 
sophisticated,  uncouth.  Dreiser,  within  his  limits, 
belongs  to  this  cabot-shod  company  of  the  elect. 
One  thinks  of  Conrad,  not  as  artist  first,  but  as 
savant.  There  is  something  of  the  icy  aloofness  of 
the  laboratory  in  him,  even  when  the  images  he 
conjures  up  pulsate  with  the  very  glow  of  life. 
He  is  almost  as  self-conscious  as  the  Beethoven  of 
the  last  quartets.  In  Dreiser  the  thing  is  more  in 
timate,  more  disorderly,  more  a  matter  of  pure 
feeling.  He  gets  his  effects,  one  might  almost  say, 
not  by  designing  them,  but  by  living  them. 

But  whatever  the  process,  the  power  of  the  image 
evoked  is  not  to  be  gainsaid.  It  is  not  only  bril 
liant  on  the  surface,  but  mysterious  and  appealing 
in  its  depths.  One  swiftly  forgets  his  intolerable 
writing,  his  mirthless,  sedulous,  repellent  manner, 
in  the  face  of  the  Athenian  tragedy  he  instils  into 
his  seduced  and  soul-sick  servant  girls,  his  bar 
baric  pirates  of  finances,  his  conquered  and  ham 
strung  supermen,  his  wives  who  sit  and  wait.  He 
has,  like  Conrad,  a  sure  talent  for  depicting  the 
spirit  in  disintegration.  Old  Gerhardt,  in  "Jennie 
Gerhardt,"  is  alone  worth  all  the  dramatis  per- 
sonae  of  popular  American  fiction  since  the  days 


THEODORE  DREISER  97 

of  "Rob  o'  the  Bowl";  Howells  could  no  more 
have  created  him,  in  his  Rodinesque  impudence  of 
outline,  than  he  could  have  created  Tartuffe  or 
Gargantua.  Such  a  novel  as  "Sister  Carrie"  stands 
quite  outside  the  brief  traffic  of  the  customary 
stage.  It  leaves  behind  it  an  unescapable  impres 
sion  of  bigness,  of  epic  sweep  and  dignity.  It  is 
not  a  mere  story,  not  a  novel  in  the  customary 
American  meaning  of  the  word;  it  is  at  once  a 
psalm  of  life  and  a  criticism  of  life — and  that 
criticism  loses  nothing  by  the  fact  that  its  burden 
is  despair.  Here,  precisely,  is  the  point  of  Drei 
ser's  departure  from  his  fellows.  He  puts  into 
his  novels  a  touch  of  the  eternal  W eltschmerz. 
They  get  below  the  drama  that  is  of  the  mo 
ment  and  reveal  the  greater  drama  that  is  with 
out  end.  They  arouse  those  deep  and  lasting 
emotions  which  grow  out  of  the  recognition  of 
elemental  and  universal  tragedy.  His  aim  is 
not  merely  to  tell  a  tale;  his  aim  is  to  show  the 
vast  ebb  and  flow  of  forces  which  sway  and  condi 
tion  human  destiny.  One  cannot  imagine  him  con 
senting  to  Conan  Doyle's  statement  of  the  purpose 
of  fiction,  quoted  with  characteristic  approval  by  the 
New  York  Times:  "to  amuse  mankind,  to  help 
the  sick  and  the  dull  and  the  weary."  Nor  is  his 
purpose  to  instruct;  if  he  is  a  pedagogue  it  is  only 


98  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

incidentally  and  as  a  weakness.  The  thing  he 
seeks  to  do  is  to  stir,  to  awaken,  to  move.  One  does 
not  arise  from  such  a  book  as  "Sister  Carrie"  with 
a  smirk  of  satisfaction;  one  leaves  it  infinitely 
touched. 

§4 

It  is,  indeed,  a  truly  amazing  first  book,  and  one 
marvels  to  hear  that  it  was  begun  lightly.  Dreiser 
in  those  days  (circa  1899),  had  seven  or  eight  years 
of  newspaper  work  behind  him,  in  Chicago,  St. 
Louis,  Toledo,  Cleveland,  Buffalo,  Pittsburgh  and 
New  York,  and  was  beginning  to  feel  that  reaction 
of  disgust  which  attacks  all  newspaper  men  when 
the  enthusiasm  of  youth  wears  out.  He  had  been 
successful,  but  he  saw  how  hollow  that  success  was, 
and  how  little  surety  it  held  out  for  the  future. 
The  theatre  was  what  chiefly  lured  him;  he  had 
written  plays  in  his  nonage,  and  he  now  proposed  to 
do  them  on  a  large  scale,  and  so  get  some  of  the 
easy  dollars  of  Broadway.  It  was  an  old  friend 
from  Toledo,  Arthur  Henry,  who  turned  him  to 
ward  story-writing.  The  two  had  met  while  Henry 
was  city  editor  of  the  Blade,  and  Dreiser  a  reporter 
looking  for  a  job.1  A  firm  friendship  sprang  up,  and 
Henry  conceived  a  high  opinion  of  Dreiser's  ability, 

i  The  episode  is  related  in  A  Hoosier  Holiday. 


THEODORE  DREISER  99 

and  urged  him  to  try  a  short  story.  Dreiser  was 
distrustful  of  his  own  skill,  but  Henry  kept  at  him, 
and  finally,  during  a  holiday  the  two  spent  together 
at  Maumee,  Ohio,  he  made  the  attempt.  Henry 
had  the  manuscript  typewritten  and  sent  it  to 
A  inslee's  Magazine.  A  week  or  so  later  there  came 
a  cheque  for  $75. 

This  was  in  1898.  Dreiser  wrote  four  more 
stories  during  the  year  following,  and  sold  them 
all.  Henry  now  urged  him  to  attempt  a  novel,  but 
again  his  distrust  of  himself  held  him  back. 
Henry  finally  tried  a  rather  unusual  argument: 
he  had  a  novel  of  his  own  on  the  stocks,1  and  he 
represented  that  he  was  in  difficulties  with  it  and  in 
need  of  company.  One  day,  in  September,  1899, 
Dreiser  took  a  sheet  of  yellow  paper  and  wrote  a 
title  at  random.  That  title  was  "Sister  Carrie," 
and  with  no  more  definite  plan  than  the  mere  name 
offered  the  book  began.  It  went  ahead  steadily 
enough  until  the  middle  of  October,  and  had  come 
by  then  to  the  place  where  Carrie  meets  Hurstwood. 
At  that  point  Dreiser  left  it  in  disgust.  It  seemed 
pitifully  dull  and  inconsequential,  and  for  two 
months  he  put  the  manuscript  away.  Then,  under 
renewed  urgings  by  Henry,  he  resumed  the  writing, 
and  kept  on  to  the  place  where  Hurstwood  steals 
i  A  Princess  of  Arcady,  published  in  1900. 


100  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

the  money.  Here  he  went  aground  upon  a  com 
paratively  simple  problem;  he  couldn't  devise  a 
way  to  manage  the  robbery.  Late  in  January  he 
gave  it  up.  But  the  faithful  Henry  kept  urging 
him,  and  in  March  he  resumed  work,  and  soon  had 
the  story  finished.  The  latter  part,  despite  many 
distractions,  went  quickly.  Once  the  manuscript 
was  complete,  Henry  suggested  various  cuts,  and 
in  all  about  40,000  words  came  out.  The  fair  copy 
went  to  the  Harpers.  They  refused  it  without 
ceremony  and  soon  afterward  Dreiser  carried  the 
manuscript  to  Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.  He  left 
it  with  Frank  Doubleday,  and  before  long  there 
came  notice  of  its  acceptance,  and,  what  is  more,  a 
contract.  But  after  the  story  was  in  type  it  fell  into 
the  hands  of  the  wife  of  one  of  the  members  of 
the  firm,  and  she  conceived  so  strong  a  notion  of 
its  immorality  that  she  soon  convinced  her  husband 
and  his  associates.  There  followed  a  series  of 
acrimonious  negotiations,  with  Dreiser  holding  reso 
lutely  to  the  letter  of  his  contract.  It  was  at  this 
point  that  Frank  Norris  entered  the  combat — 
bravely  but  in  vain.  The  pious  Barabbases,  con 
fronted  by  their  signature,  found  it  impossible  to 
throw  up  the  book  entirely,  but  there  was  no  nomi 
nation  in  the  bond  regarding  either  the  style  of 
binding  or  the  number  of  copies  to  be  issued,  and 


THEODORE  DREISER  101 

so  they  evaded  further  dispute  by  bringing  out 
the  book  in  a  very  small  edition  and  with  modest 
unstamped  covers.  Copies  of  this  edition  are  now 
eagerly  sought  by  book-collectors,  and  one  in  good 
condition  fetches  $25  or  more  in  the  auction  rooms. 
Even  the  second  edition  (1907),  bearing  the  im 
print  of  B.  W.  Dodge  &  Co.,  carries  an  increasing 
premium. 

The  passing  years  work  strange  farces.  The 
Harpers,  who  had  refused  "Sister  Carrie"  with  a 
spirit  bordering  upon  indignation  in  1900,  took 
over  the  rights  of  publication  from  B.  W.  Dodge  & 
Co.,  in  1912,  and  reissued  the  book  in  a  new  (and 
extremely  hideous)  format,  with  a  publisher's  note 
containing  smug  quotations  from  the  encomiums 
of  the  Fortnightly  Review,  the  Athenaeum,  the 
Spectator,  the  Academy  and  other  London  critical 
journals.  More,  they  contrived  humorously  to 
push  the  date  of  their  copyright  back  to  1900.  But 
this  new  enthusiasm  for  artistic  freedom  did  not  last 
long.  They  had  published  "Jennie  Gerhardt"  in 
1911  and  they  did  "The  Financier"  in  1912,  but 
when  "The  Titan"  followed,  in  1914,  they  were 
seized  with  qualms,  and  suppressed  the  book  after 
it  had  got  into  type.  In  this  emergency  the  Eng 
lish  firm  of  John  Lane  came  to  the  rescue,  only  to 
seek  cover  itself  when  the  Comstocks  attacked  "The 


102  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

'Genius,'  "  two  years  later.  .  .  .  For  his  high  serv 
ices  to  American  letters,  Walter  H.  Page,  of 
Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.,  was  made  ambassador  to 
England,  where  "Sister  Carrie"  is  regarded  (ac 
cording  to  the  Harpers),  as  "the  best  story,  on  the 
whole,  that  has  yet  come  out  of  America."  A 
curious  series  of  episodes.  Another  proof,  per 
haps,  of  that  cosmic  imbecility  upon  which  Dreiser 
is  so  fond  of  discoursing.  .  .  . 

But  of  all  this  I  shall  say  more  later  on,  when 
I  come  to  discuss  the  critical  reception  of  the  Drei 
ser  novels,  and  the  efforts  made  by~TKeTNew  York 
Society  for  the  Suppression  of  Vice  to  stop  their 
sale.  The  thing  to  notice  here  is  that  the  author's 
difficulties  with  "Sister  Carrie"  came  within  an 
ace  of  turning  him  from  novel-writing  completely. 
Stray  copies  of  the  suppressed  first  edition,  true 
enough,  fell  into  the  hands  of  critics  who  saw  the 
story's  value,  and  during  the  first  year  or  two  of 
the  century  it  enjoyed  a  sort  of  esoteric  vogue,  and 
encouragement  came  from  unexpected  sources. 
Moreover,  a  somewhat  bowdlerized  English  edi 
tion,  published  by  William  Heinemann  in  1901, 
made  a  fair  success,  and  even  provoked  a  certain 
mild  controversy.  But  the  author's  income  from 
the  book  remained  almost  nil,  and  so  he  was  forced 
to  seek  a  livelihood  in  other  directions.  His  his- 


THEODORE  DREISER  103 

tory  during  the  next  ten  years  belongs  to  the  tragi 
comedy  of  letters.  For  five  of  them  he  was  a  Grub 
Street  hack,  turning  his  hand  to  any  literary  job 
that  offered.  He  wrote  short  stories  for  the  popu 
lar  magazines,  or  special  articles,  or  poems,  accord 
ing  as  their  needs  varied.  He  concocted  fabulous 
tales  for  the  illustrated  supplements  of  the  Sunday 
newspapers.  He  rewrote  the  bad  stuff  of  other 
men.  He  returned  to  reporting.  He  did  odd 
pieces  of  editing.  He  tried  his  hand  at  one-act 
plays.  He  even  ventured  upon  advertisement 
writing.  And  all  the  while,  the  best  that  he  could 
get  out  of  his  industry  was  a  meagre  living. 

In  1905,  tiring  of  the  uncertainties  of  this  life, 
he  accepted  a  post  on  the  staff  of  Street  &  Smith, 
the  millionaire  publishers  of  cheap  magazines,  serv 
ant-girl  romances  and  dime-novels,  and  here,  in 
the  very  slums  of  letters,  he  laboured  with  tongue 
in  cheek  until  the  next  year.  The  tale  of  his  duties 
will  fill,  I  daresay,  a  volume  or  two  in  the  autobiog 
raphy  on  which  he  is  said  to  be  working;  it  is  a 
chronicle  full  of  achieved  impossibilities.  One  of 
his  jobs,  for  example,  was  to  reduce  a  whole  series 
of  dime-novels,  each  60,000  words  in  length,  to 
30,000  words  apiece.  He  accomplished  it  by  cut 
ting  each  one  into  halves,  and  writing  a  new  end 
ing  for  the  first  half  and  a  new  beginning  for  the 


104  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

second,  with  new  titles  for  both.  This  doubling 
of  their  property  aroused  the  admiration  of  his 
employers;  they  promised  him  an  assured  and  easy 
future  in  the  dime-novel  business.  But  he  tired 
of  it,  despite  this  revelation  of  a  gift  for  it,  and  in 
1906  he  became  managing  editor  of  the  Broadway 
Magazine,  then  struggling  into  public  notice.  A 
year  later  he  transferred  his  flag  to  the  Butterick 
Building,  and  became  chief  editor  of  the  Delin 
eator,  the  Designer  and  other  such  gospels  for  the 
fair.  Here,  of  course,  he  was  as  much  out  of  water 
as  in  the  dime-novel  foundry  of  Street  &  Smith,  but 
at  all  events  the  pay  was  good,  and  there  was  a 
certain  leisure  at  the  end  of  the  day's  work.  In 

(1907,  as  part  of  his  duties,  he  organized  the  Na 
tional  Child  Rescue  Campaign,  which  still  rages  as 
the  Delineator's  contribution  to  the  Uplift.  At 
about  the  same  time  he  began  "Jennie  Gerhardt." 
It  is  curious  to  note  that,  during  these  same  years, 
Arnold  Bennett  was  slaving  in  London  as  the  editor 
of  Woman. 

Dreiser  left  the  Delineator  in  1910,  and  for  the 
next  half  year  or  so  endeavoured  to  pump  vitality 
into  the  Bohemian  Magazine,  in  which  he  had  ac 
quired  a  proprietary  interest.  But  the  Bohemian 
soon  departed  this  life,  carrying  some  of  his  sav 
ings  with  it,  and  he  gave  over  his  enforced  leisure 


THEODORE  DREISER  105 

to  "Jennie  Gerhardt,"  completing  the  book  in  1911. 
Its  publication  by  the  Harpers  during  the  same 
year  worked  his  final  emancipation  from  the  edi 
torial  desk.  It  was  praised,  and  what  is  more,  it 
sold,  and  royalties  began  to  come  in.  A  new  edi 
tion  of  "Sister  Carrie"  followed  in  1912,  with  "The 
Financier"  hard  upon  its  heels.  Since  then  Dreiser 
has  devoted  himself  wholly  to  serious  work.  "The 
Financier"  was  put  forth  as  the  first  volume  of  "a 
trilogy  of  desire";  the  second  volume,  "The 
Titan,"  was  published  in  1914;  the  third  is  yet  to 
come.  "The  'Genius'  "  appeared  in  1915;  "The 
Bulwark"  is  just  announced.  In  1912,  accom 
panied  by  Grant  Richards,  the  London  publisher, 
Dreiser  made  his  first  trip  abroad,  visiting  England, 
France,  Italy  and  Germany.  His  impressions  were 
recorded  in  "A  Traveler  at  Forty,"  published  in 
1913.  In  the  summer  of  1915,  accompanied  by 
Franklin  Booth,  the  illustrator,  he  made  an  automo 
bile  journey  to  his  old  haunts  in  Indiana,  and  the 
record  is  in  "A  Hoosier  Holiday,"  published  in 
1916.  His  other  writings  include  a  volume  of 
"Plays  of  the  Natural  and  the  Supernatural" 
(1916);  "Life,  Art  and  America,"  a  pamphlet 
against  Puritanism  in  letters  (1917);  a  dozen  or 
more  short  stories  and  novelettes,  a  few  poems,  and 
a  three-act  drama,  "The  Hand  of  the  Potter." 


106  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

Dreiser  was  born  at  Terre  Haute,  Indiana,  on 
August  27,  1871,  and,  like  most  of  us,  is  of  mon 
grel  blood,  with  the  German,  perhaps,  predom 
inating.  He  is  a  tall  man,  awkward  in  movement 
and  nervous  in  habit;  the  boon  of  beauty  has  been 
denied  him.  The  history  of  his  youth  is  set  forth  in 
full  in  "A  Hoosier  Holiday."  It  is  curious  to  note 
that  he  is  a  brother  to  the  late  Paul  Dresser,  author 
of  "The  Banks  of  the  Wabash"  and  other  popular 
songs,  and  that  he  himself,  helping  Paul  over  a  hard 
place,  wrote  the  affecting  chorus: 

Oh,  the  moon  is  fair  tonight  along  the  Wabash, 

From  the  fields  there  comes  the  breath  of  new-mown  hay; 

Through  the  sycamores  the  candle  lights  are  gleaming  .  .  . 

But  no  doubt  you  know  it. 

.§5 

The  work  of  Dreiser,  considered  as  craftsman- 
ship  pure  and  simple,  is  extremely  uneven,  and  the 
distance  separating  his  best  from  his  worst  is  almost 
infinite.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  the  novelist 
who  wrote  certain  extraordinarily  vivid  chapters  in 
"Jennie  Gerhardt,"  and  "A  Hoosier  Holiday,"  and, 
above  all,  in  "The  Titan,"  is  the  same  who  achieved 
the  unescapable  dulness  of  parts  of  "The  Finan 
cier"  and  the  general  stupidity  and  stodginess  of 


THEODORE  DREISER  107 

"The  'Genius.' '  Moreover,  the  tide  of  his  writing 
does  not  rise  or  fall  with  any  regularity ;  he  neither 
improves  steadily  nor  grows  worse  steadily.  Only 
half  an  eye  is  needed  to  see  the  superiority  of 
"Jennie  Gerhardt,"  as  a  sheer  piece  of  writing,  to 
"Sister  Carrie,"  but  on  turning  to  "The  Financier," 
which  followed  "Jennie  Gerhardt"  by  an  interval 
of  but  one  year,  one  observes  a  falling  off  which, 
at  its  greatest,  is  almost  indistinguishable  from  a 
collapse.  "Jennie  Gerhardt"  is  suave,  persuasive, 
well-ordered,  solid  in  structure,  instinct  with  life. 
"The  Financier,"  for  all  its  merits  in  detail,  is 
loose,  tedious,  vapid,  exasperating.  But  had  any 
critic,  in  the  autumn  of  1912,  argued  thereby  that 
Dreiser  was  finished,  that  he  had  shot  his  bolt,  his 
discomfiture  would  have  come  swiftly,  for  "The 
Titan,"  which  followed  in  1914,  was  almost  as  well 
done  as  "The  Financier"  had  been  ill  done,  and 
there  are  parts  of  it  which  remain,  to  this  day,  the 
very  best  writing  that  Dreiser  has  ever  achieved. 
But  "The  'Genius'  "?  Ay,  in  "The  'Genius'  "  the, 
pendulum  swings  back  again!  J  It  is  flaccid,  ele 
phantine,  doltish,  coarse,  dismal,  flatulent,  sopho-JI 
moric,  ignorant,  unconvincing,  wearisome.  One 
pities  the  jurisconsult  who  is  condemned,  by  Com- 
stockian  clamour,  to  plough  through  such  a  novel. 
In  it  there  is  a  sort  of  humourless  reductio  ad  ab- 


108  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

surdum,  not  only  of  the  Dreiser  manner,  but  even 
of  certain  salient  tenets  of  the  Dreiser  philosophy. 
At  its  best  it  has  a  moral  flavour.  At  its  worst  it  is 
almost  maudlin.  .  .  . 

The  most  successful  of  the  Dreiser  novels, 
judged  by  sales,  is  "Sister  Carrie,"  and  the  causes 
thereof  are  not  far  to  seek.  On  the  one  hand,  its 
suppression  in  1900  gave  it  a  whispered  fame  that 
was  converted  into  a  public  celebrity  when  it  was 
republished  in  1907,  and  on  the  other  hand  it  shares 
with  "Jennie  Gerhardt"  the  capital  advantage  of 
having  a  young  and  appealing  woman  for  its  chief 
figure.  The  sentimentalists  thus  have  a  heroine  to 
cry  over,  and  to  put  into  a  familiar  pigeon-hole; 
Carrie  becomes  a  sort  of  Pollyanna.  More,  it  is, 
at  bottom,  a  tale  of  love — the  one  theme  of  per 
manent  interest  to  the  average  American  novel- 
reader,  the  chief  stuffing  of  all  our  best-selling  ro 
mances.  True  enough,  it  is  vastly  more  than  this — 
there  is  in  it,  for  example,  the  astounding  portrait 
of  Hurstwood — ,  but  it  seems  to  me  plain  that  its 
j  relative  popularity  is  by  no  means  a  test  of  its  rela- 
*  tive  merit,  and  that  the  causes  of  that  popularity 
must  be  sought  in  other  directions.  Its  defect,  as 
a  work  of  art,  is  a  defect  of  structure.  Like  Nor- 
**  ris'  "McTeague"  it  has  a  broken  back.  In  the 
midst  of  the  story  of  Carrie,  Dreiser  pauses  to  tell 


THEODORE  DREISER  109 

the  story  of  Hurstwood — a  memorably  vivid  and 
tragic  story,  to  be  sure,  but  still  one  that,  consider 
ing  artistic  form  and  organization,  does  damage  to 
the  main  business  of  the  book.  Its  outstanding 
merit  is  its  simplicity,  its  unaffected  seriousness  and 
fervour,  the  spirit  of  youth  that  is  in  it.  One  feels 
that  it  was  written,  not  by  a  novelist  conscious  of 
h^s  tricks,  but  by  a  novice  carried  away  by  his  own 
flaming  eagerness,  his  own  high  sense  of  the  inter 
est  of  what  he  was  doing./  In  this  aspect,  it  is  per 
haps  more  typically  Dreiserian  than  any  of  its  suc 
cessors.  And  maybe  we  may  seek  here  for  a  good 
deal  of  its  popular  appeal,  for  there  is  a  contagion 
in  naivete  as  in  enthusiasm,  and  the  simple  novel- 
reader  may  recognize  the  kinship  of  a  simple  mind 
in  the  novelist. 

But  it  is  in  "Jennie  Gerhardt"  that  Dreiser  first 
shows  his  true  mettle.  .  .  .  "The  power  to  tell  the 
same  story  in  two  forms,"  said  George  Moore,  "is 
the  sign  of  the  true  artist."  Here  Dreiser  sets  him 
self  that  difficult  task,  and  here  he  carries  it  off  with 
almost  complete  success.  Reduce  the  story  to  a 
hundred  words,  and  the  same  words  would  also 
describe  "Sister  Carrie."  Jennie,  like  Carrie,  is  a 
rose  grown  from  turnip-seed.  Over  each,  at  the 
start,  hangs  poverty,  ignorance,  the  dumb  helpless 
ness  of  the  Shudra,  and  yet  in  each  there  is  that  in- 


110  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

describable  something,  that  element  of  essential 
gentleness,  that  innate  inward  beauty  which  levels 
all  barriers  of  caste,  and  makes  Esther  a  fit  queen 
for  Ahasuerus.  Some  Frenchman  has  put  it  into  a 
phrase:  "Une  time  grande  dans  un  petit  destin" 
— a  great  soul  in  a  small  destiny.  Jennie  has  some 
touch  of  that  greatness;  Dreiser  is  forever  calling 
her  "  a  big  woman";  it  is  a  refrain  almost  as  irri 
tating  as  the  "trig"  of  "The  Titan."  Carrie,  one 
feels,  is  of  baser  metal;  her  dignity  never  rises  to 
anything  approaching  nobility.  But  the  history  of 
each  is  the  history  of  the  other.  Jennie,  like  Car 
rie,  escapes  from  the  physical  miseries  of  the  strug 
gle  for  existence  only  to  taste  the  worse  miseries  of 
the  struggle  for  happiness.  Don't  mistake  me ;  we 
have  here  no  maudlin  tales  of  seduced  maidens. 
Seduction,  in  truth,  is  far  from  tragedy  for  either 
Jennie  or  Carrie.  The  gain  of  each,  until  the  actual 
event  has  been  left  behind  and  obliterated  by  ex 
periences  more  salient  and  poignant,  is  greater  than 
her  loss,  and  that  gain  is  to  the  soul  as  well  as  to 
the  creature.  With  the  rise  from  want  to  security, 
from  fear  to  ease,  comes  an  awakening  of  the  finer 
perceptions,  a  widening  of  the  sympathies,  a  grad 
ual  unfolding  of  the  delicate  flower  called  per 
sonality,  an  increased  capacity  for  loving  and 
living.  But  with  all  this,  and  as  a  part  of  it,  there 


THEODORE  DREISER  111 

comes,  too,  an  increased  capacity  for  suffering — 
and  so  in  the  end,  when  love  slips  away  and  the 
empty  years  stretch  before,  it  is  the  awakened  and 
supersentient  woman  that  pays  for  the  folly  of  the 
groping,  bewildered  girl.  The  tragedy  of  Carrie 
and  Jennie,  in  brief,  is  not  that  they  are  degraded, 
but  that  they  are  lifted  up,  not  that  they  go  to  the 
gutter,  but  that  they  escape  the  gutter  and  glimpse 
the  stars. 

But  if  the  two  stories  are  thus  variations  upon 
the  same  sombre  theme,  if  each  starts  from  the  same 
place  and  arrives  at  the  same  dark  goal,  if  each 
shows  a  woman  heartened  by  the  same  hopes  and 
tortured  by  the  same  agonies,  there  is  still  a  vast 
difference  between  them,  and  that  difference  is  the 
measure  of  the  author's  progress  in  his  craft  during 
the  eleven  years  between  1900  and  1911.  "Sister 
Carrie,"  at  bottom,  is  no  more  than  a  first  sketch,  a 
rough  piling  up  of  observations  and  ideas,  disor 
dered  and  often  incoherent.  In  the  midst  of  the 
story,  as  I  have  said,  the  author  forgets  it,  and  starts 
off  upon  another.  In  "Jennie  Gerhardt"  there  is  no 
such  flaccidity  of  structure,  no  such  vacillation  in 
aim,  no  such  proliferation  of  episode.  Consider 
ing  that  it  is  by  Dreiser,  it  is  extraordinarily  adept 
and  intelligent  in  design;  only  in  "The  Titan"  has 
he  ever  done  so  well.  From  beginning  to  end  the 


112  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

narrative  flows  logically,  steadily,  congruously. 
Episodes  there  are,  of  course,  but  they  keep  their 
proper  place  and  bulk.  It  is  always  Jennie  that 
stands  at  the  centre  of  the  traffic;  it  is  in  Jennie's 
soul  that  every  scene  is  ultimately  played  out.  Her 
father  and  mother;  Senator  Brander,  the  god  of  her 
first  worship ;  her  daughter  Vesta,  and  Lester  Kane, 
the  man  who  makes  and  mars  her — all  these  are 
drawn  with  infinite  painstaking,  and  in  every  one 
of  them  there  is  the  blood  of  life.  But  it  is  Jennie 
that  dominates  the  drama  from  curtain  to  curtain. 
Not  an  event  is  unrelated  to  her;  not  a  climax  fails 
to  make  clearer  the  struggles  going  on  in  her  mind 
and  heart. 

It  is  in  "Jennie  Gerhardt"  that  Dreiser's  view  of 
life  begins  to  take  on  coherence  and  to  show  a  gen 
eral  tendency.  In  "Sister  Carrie"  the  thing  is  still 
chiefly  representation  and  no  more;  the  image  is 
undoubtedly  vivid,  but  its  significance,  in  the  main, 
is  left  undisplayed.  In  "Jennie  Gerhardt"  this 
pictorial  achievement  is  reinforced  by  interpreta 
tion;  one  carries  away  an  impression  that  some 
thing  has  been  said;  it  is  not  so  much  a  visual 
image  of  Jennie  that  remains  as  a  sense  of  the 
implacable  tragedy  that  engulfs  her.  The  book  is 
full  of  artistic  passion.  It  lives  and  glows.  It 
awakens  recognition  and  feeling.  Its  lucid  idea- 


THEODORE  DREISER  113 

tional  structure,  even  more  than  the  artless  gusto 
of  "Sister  Carrie,"  produces  a  penetrating  and 
powerful  effect.  Jennie  is  no  mere  individual ;  she 
is  a  type  of  the  national  character,  almost  the  arche 
type  of  the  muddled,  aspiring,  tragic,  fate-flogged 
mass.  And  the  scene  in  which  she  is  set  is  bril 
liantly  national  too.  The  Chicago  of  those  great 
days  of  feverish  money-grabbing  and  crazy  aspira 
tion  may  well  stand  as  the  epitome  of  America,  and 
it  is  made  clearer  here  than  in  any  other  American 
novel— clearer  than  in  "The  Pit"  or  "The  Cliff- 
Dwellers" — clearer  than  in  any  book  by  an  East 
erner — almost  as  clear  as  the  Paris  of  Balzac  and 
Zola.  Finally,  the  style  of  the  story  is  indis- 
solubly  wedded  to  its  matter.  The  narrative,  in 
places,  has  an  almost  scriptural  solemnity;  in  its 
very  harshness  and  baldness  there  is  something 
subtly  meet  and  fitting.  One  cannot  imagine  such 
a  history  done  in  the  strained  phrases  of  Meredith 
or  the  fugal  manner  of  Henry  James.  One  cannot 
imagine  that  stark,  stenographic  dialogue  adorned 
with  the  tinsel  of  pretty  words.  The  thing,  to  reach 
the  heights  it  touches,  could  have  been  done  only 
in  the  way  it  has  been  done.  As  it  stands,  I  would 
not  take  anything  away  from  it,  not  even  its  jour 
nalistic  banalities,  its  lack  of  humour,  its  incessant 
returns  to  C  major.  A  primitive  and  touching 


114  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

poetry  is  in  it.     It  is  a  novel,  I  am  convinced,  of 
the  first  consideration.  .  .  . 

In  "The  Financier"  this  poetry  is  almost  absent, 
and  that  fact  is  largely  to  blame  for  the  book's 
lack  of  charm.  By  the  time  we  see  him  in  "The 
Titan"  Frank  Cowperwood  has  taken  on  heroic  pro 
portions  and  the  romance  of  great  adventure  is  in 
him,  but  in  "The  Financier"  he  is  still  little  more 
than  an  extra-pertinacious  money-grubber,  and  not 
unrelated  to  the  average  stock  broker  or  corner 
grocer.  True  enough,  Dreiser  says  specifically 
that  he  is  more,  that  the  thing  he  craves  is  not  money 
but  power — power  to  force  lesser  men  to  execute  his 
commands,  power  to  surround  himself  with  beau 
tiful  and  splendid  things,  power  to  amuse  him 
self  with  women,  power  to  defy  and  nullify  the 
laws  made  for  the  timorous  and  unimagina 
tive.  But  the  intent  of  the  author  never  really 
gets  into  his  picture.  His  Cowperwood  in  this 
first  stage  is  hard,  commonplace,  unimaginative. 
In  "The  Titan"  he  flowers  out  as  a  blend  of 
revolutionist  and  voluptuary,  a  highly  civilized 
Lorenzo  the  Magnificent,  an  immoralist  who  would 
not  hesitate  two  minutes  about  seducing  a  saint, 
but  would  turn  sick  at  the  thought  of  harm 
ing  a  child.  But  in  "The  Financier"  he  is  still  in 


THEODORE  DREISER  115 

the  larval  state,  and  a  repellent  sordidness  hangs 
about  him. 

Moreover,  the  story  of  his  rise  is  burdened  by 
two  defects  which  still  further  corrupt  its  effect. 
One  lies  in  the  fact  that  Dreiser  is  quite  unable  to 
get  the  feel,  so  to  speak,  of  Philadelphia,  just  as  he 
is  unable  to  get  the  feel  of  New  York  in  "The 
'Genius.'  "  The  other  is  that  the  style  of  the  writ 
ing  in  the  book  reduces  the  dreiserian  manner  to 
absurdity,  and  almost  to  impossibility.  The  in 
credibly  lazy,  involved  and  unintelligent  descrip 
tion  of  the  trial  of  Cowperwood  I  have  already  men 
tioned.  We  get,  in  this  lumbering  chronicle,  not  a 
cohesive  and  luminous  picture,  but  a  dull,  photo 
graphic  representation  of  the  whole  tedious  process, 
beginning  with  an  account  of  the  political  obliga 
tions  of  the  judge  and  district  attorney,  proceeding 
to  a  consideration  of  the  habits  of  mind  of  each  of 
the  twelve  jurymen,  and  ending  with  a  summary  of 
the  majority  and  minority  opinions  of  the  court  of 
appeals,  and  a  discussion  of  the  motives,  ideals, 
traditions,  prejudices,  sympathies  and  chicaneries 
behind  them,  each  and  severally.  When  Cowper 
wood  goes  into  the  market,  his  operations  are  set 
forth  in  their  last  detail;  we  are  told  how  many 
shares  he  buys,  how  much  he  pays  for  them,  what 


116  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

the  commission  is,  what  his  profit  comes  to.  When 
he  comes  into  chance  contact  with  a  politician,  we 
hear  all  about  that  politician,  including  his  family 
affairs.  When  he  builds  and  furnishes  a  house, 
the  chief  rooms  in  it  are  inventoried  with  such  care 
that  not  a  chair  or  a  rug  or  a  picture  on  the  wall  is 
overlooked.  The  endless  piling  up  of  such  non- 
essentials  cripples  and  incommodes  the  story;  its 
drama  is  too  copiously  swathed  in  words  to  achieve 
a  sting;  the  Dreiser  manner  devours  and  defeats 
itself. 

But  none  the  less  the  book  has  compensatory 
merits.  Its  character  sketches,  for  all  the  cloud  of 
words,  are  lucid  and  vigorous.  Out  of  that  enor 
mous  complex  of  crooked  politics  and  crookeder 
finance,  Cowperwood  himself  stands  out  in  the 
round,  comprehensible  and  alive.  And  all  the 
others,  in  their  lesser  measures,  are  done  almost 
as  well — Cowperwood's  pale  wife,  whimpering  in 
her  empty  house;  Aileen  Butler,  his  mistress;  his 
doddering  and  eternally  amazed  old  father;  his  old- 
fashioned,  stupid,  sentimental  mother;  Stener,  the 
City  Treasurer,  a  dish-rag  in  the  face  of  danger; 
old  Edward  Malia  Butler,  that  barbarian  in  a  boiled 
shirt,  with  his  Homeric  hatred  and  his  broken  heart. 
Particularly  old  Butler.  The  years  pass  and  he 
must  be  killed  and  put  away,  but  not  many  readers 


THEODORE  DREISER  117 

of  the  book,  I  take  it,  will  soon  forget  him.  Dreiser 
is  at  his  best,  indeed,  when  he  deals  with  old  men. 
In  their  tragic  helplessness  they  stand  as  symbols  of 
that  unfathomable  cosmic  cruelty  which  he  sees  as 
the  motive  power  of  life  itself.  More,  even,  than 
his  women,  he  makes  them  poignant,  vivid,  memo 
rable.  The  picture  of  old  Gerhardt  is  full  of  a 
subtle  brightness,  though  he  is  always  in  the  back 
ground,  as  cautious  and  penny-wise  as  an  ancient 
crow,  trotting  to  his  Lutheran  church,  pathetically 
ill-used  by  the  world  he  never  understands.  But 
ler  is  another  such,  different  in  externals,  but  at 
bottom  the  same  dismayed,  questioning,  pathetic  old 
man.  .  .  . 

In  "The  Titan"  there  is  a  tightening  of  the 
screws,  a  clarifying  of  the  action,  an  infinite  im 
provement  in  the  manner.  The  book,  in  truth,  has 
the  air  of  a  new  and  clearer  thinking  out  of  "The 
Financier,"  as  "Jennie  Gerhardt"  is  a  new  thinking 
out  of  "Sister  Carrie."  With  almost  the  same 
materials,  the  thing  is  given  a  new  harmony  and 
unity,  a  new  plausibility,  a  new  passion  and  pur 
pose.  In  "The  Financier"  the  artistic  voluptuary 
is  almost  completely  overshadowed  by  the  dollar- 
chaser;  in  "The  Titan"  we  begin  to  see  clearly  that 
grand  battle  between  artist  and  man  of  money, 
idealist  and  materialist,  spirit  and  flesh,  which  is 


118  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

the  informing  theme  of  the  whole  trilogy.  The  con 
flict  that  makes  the  drama,  once  chiefly  external, 
now  becomes  more  and  more  internal;  it  is  played 
out  within  the  soul  of  the  man  himself.  The  result 
is  a  character  sketch  of  the  highest  colour  and  bril- 
liance,  a  superb  portrait  of  a  complex  and  ex 
tremely  fascinating  man.  Of  all  the  personages  in 
the  Dreiser  books,  the  Cowperwood  of  "The  Titan" 
is  perhaps  the  most  radiantly  real.  He  is  accounted 
for  in  every  detail,  and  yet,  in  the  end,  he  is  not 
accounted  for  at  all;  there  hangs  about  him,  to  the 
last,  that  baffling  mysteriousness  which  hangs  about 
those  we  know  most  intimately.  There  is  in  him 
a  complete  and  indubitable  masculinity,  as  the  eter 
nal  feminine  is  in  Jennie.  His  struggle  with  the 
inexorable  forces  that  urge  him  on  as  with  whips, 
and  lure  him  with  false  lights,  and  bring  him  to 
disillusion  and  dismay,  is  as  typical  as  hers  is,  and 
as  tragic.  In  his  ultimate  disaster,  so  plainly  fore 
shadowed  at  the  close,  there  is  the  clearest  of  all 
projections  of  the  ideas  that  lie  at  the  bottom  of  all 
Dreiser's  work.  Cowperwood,  above  any  of  them, 
is  his  protagonist. 

The  story,  in  its  plan,  is  as  transparent  as  in  its 
burden.  It  has  an  austere  simplicity  in  the  telling 
that  fits  the  directness  of  the  thing  told.  Dreiser, 
as  if  to  clear  decks,  throws  over  all  the  immemorial 


THEODORE  DREISER  119 

baggage  of  the  novelist,  making  short  shrift  of 
"heart  interest,"  conventional  "sympathy,"  and 
even  what  ordinarily  passes  for  romance.  In  "Sis 
ter  Carrie,"  as  I  have  pointed  out,  there  is  still  a 
sweet  dish  for  the  sentimentalists ;  if  they  don't  like 
the  history  of  Carrie  as  a  work  of  art  they  may  still 
wallow  in  it  as  a  sad,  sad  love  story.  Carrie  is 
appealing,  melting;  she  moves,  like  Marguerite 
Gautier,  in  an  atmosphere  of  romantic  depression. 
And  Jennie  Gerhardt,  in  this  aspect,  is  merely  Car 
rie  done  over — a  Carrie  more  carefully  and  ob 
jectively  drawn,  perhaps,  but  still  conceivably  to  be 
mistaken  for  a  "sympathetic"  heroine  in  a  best 
seller.  A  lady  eating  chocolates  might  jump  from 
"Laddie"  to  "Jennie  Gerhardt"  without  knowing 
that  she  was  jumping  ten  thousand  miles.  The  tear 
jugs  are  there  to  cry  into.  Even  in  "The  Finan 
cier"  there  is  still  a  hint  of  familiar  things.  The 
first  Mrs.  Cowperwood  is  sorely  put  upon;  old  But 
ler  has  the  markings  of  an  irate  father;  Cowper 
wood  himself  suffers  the  orthodox  injustice  and 
languishes  in  a  cell.  But  no  one,  I  venture,  will 
ever  fall  into  any  such  mistake  in  identity  in  ap 
proaching  "The  Titan."  Not  a  single  appeal  to 
facile  sentiment  is  in  it.  It  proceeds  from  begin 
ning  to  end  in  a  forthright,  uncompromising,  confi 
dent  manner.  It  is  an  almost  purely  objective 


120  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

account,  as  devoid  of  cheap  heroics  as  a  death  cer 
tificate,  of  a  strong  man's  contest  with  incontestable 
powers  without  and  no  less  incontestable  powers 
within.  There  is  nothing  of  the  conventional  out 
law  about  him;  he  does  not  wear  a  red  sash  and 
bellow  for  liberty;  fate  wrings  from  him  no  melo 
dramatic  defiances.  In  the  midst  of  the  battle  he 
views  it  with  a  sort  of  ironical  detachment,  as  if 
lifted  above  himself  by  the  sheer  aesthetic  spectacle. 
Even  in  disaster  he  asks  for  no  quarter,  no  gener 
osity,  no  compassion.  Up  or  down,  he  keeps  his 
zest  for  the  game  that  is  being  played,  and  is  suffi 
cient  unto  himself. 

Such  a  man  as  this  Cowperwood  of  the  Chicago 
days,  described  romantically,  would  be  indistin 
guishable  from  the  wicked  earls  and  seven-foot 
guardsmen  of  Ouida,  Robert  W.  Chambers  and  The 
Duchess.  But  described  realistically  and  cold 
bloodedly,  with  all  that  wealth  of  minute  and  ap 
parently  inconsequential  detail  which  Dreiser  piles 
up  so  amazingly,  he  becomes  a  figure  astonishingly 
vivid,  lifelike  and  engrossing.  He  fits  into  no  a 
priori  theory  of  conduct  or  scheme  of  rewards  and 
punishments;  he  proves  nothing  and  teaches  noth 
ing;  the  forces  which  move  him  are  never  obvious 
and  frequently  unintelligible.  But  in  the  end  he 
seems  genuinely  a  man — a  man  of  the  sort  we  see 


THEODORE  DREISER  121 

about  us  in  the  real  world — not  a  patent  and  auto 
matic  fellow,  reacting  docilely  and  according  to  a 
formula,  but  a  bundle  of  complexities  and  contra 
dictions,  a  creature  oscillating  between  the  light  and 
the  shadow — at  bottom,  for  all  his  typical  repre 
sentation  of  a  race  and  a  civilization,  a  unique  and 
inexplicable  personality.  More,  he  is  a  man  of  the 
first  class,  an  Achilles  of  his  world;  and  here  the 
achievement  of  Dreiser  is  most  striking,  for  he 
succeeds  where  all  fore-runners  failed.  It  is  easy 
enough  to  explain  how  John  Smith  courted  his  wife, 
and  even  how  William  Brown  fought  and  died  for 
his  country,  but  it  is  inordinately  difficult  to  give 
plausibility  to  the  motives,  feelings  and  processes 
of  mind  of  a  man  whose  salient  character  is  that 
they  transcend  all  ordinary  experience.  Too  often, 
even  when  made  by  the  highest  creative  and  inter 
pretative  talent,  the  effort  has  resolved  itself  into  a 
begging  of  the  question.  Shakespeare  made  Ham 
let  comprehensible  to  the  groundlings  by  diluting 
that  half  of  him  which  was  Shakespeare  with  a  half 
which  was  a  college  sophomore.  In  the  same  way 
he  saved  Lear  by  making  him,  in  large  part,  a 
tedious  and  obscene  old  donkey — the  blood  brother 
of  any  average  ancient  of  any  average  English  tap 
room.  Tackling  Caesar,  he  was  rescued  by  Brutus' 
knife.  George  Bernard  Shaw,  facing  the  same  dif- 


122  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

ficulty,  resolved  it  by  drawing  a  composite  portrait 
of  two  or  three  London  actor-managers  and  half 
a  dozen  English  politicians.  But  Dreiser  makes  no 
such  compromise.  He  bangs  into  the  difficulties  of 
his  problem  head  on,  and  if  he  does  not  solve  it 
absolutely,  he  at  least  makes  an  extraordinarily 
close  approach  to  a  solution.  In  "The  Financier" 
a  certain  incredulity  still  hangs  about  Cowperwood ; 
in  "The  Titan"  he  suddenly  comes  unquestionably 
real.  If  you  want  to  get  the  true  measure  of  this 
feat,  put  it  beside  the  failure  of  Frank  Norris  with 
Curtis  Jadwin  in  "The  Pit."  .  .  . 

"The  'Genius,'  "  which  interrupted  the  "trilogy 
of  desire,"  marks  the  nadir  of  Dreiser's  accom 
plishment,  as  "The  Titan"  marks  its  apogee.  The 
plan  of  it,  of  course,  is  simple  enough,  and  it  is  one 
that  Dreiser,  at  his  best,  might  have  carried  out  with 
undoubted  success.  What  he  is  trying  to  show,  in 
brief,  is  the  battle  that  goes  on  in  the  soul  of  every 
man  of  active  mind  between  the  desire  for  self-ex 
pression  and  the  desire  for  safety,  for  public  re 
spect,  for  emotional  equanimity.  It  is,  in  a  sense, 
the  story  of  Cowperwood  told  over  again,  but  with 
an  important  difference,  for  Eugene  Witla  is  a  much 
less  self-reliant  and  powerful  fellow  than  Cowper 
wood,  and  so  he  is  unable  to  muster  up  the  vast 
resolution  of  spirits  that  he  needs  to  attain  happi- 


THEODORE  DREISER  123 

ness.  "The  Titan"  is  the  history  of  a  strong  man. 
"The  'Genius'  "  is  the  history  of  a  man  essentially 
weak.  Eugene  Witla  can  never  quite  choose  his 
route  in  life.  He  goes  on  sacrificing  ease  to  as 
piration  and  aspiration  to  ease  to  the  end  of  the 
chapter.  He  vacillates  abominably  and  forever 
between  two  irreconcilable  desires.  Even  when,  at 
the  close,  he  sinks  into  a  whining  sort  of  resigna 
tion,  the  proud  courage  of  Cowperwood  is  not  in 
him;  he  is  always  a  bit  despicable  in  his  pathos. 

As  I  say,  a  story  of  simple  outlines,  and  well 
adapted  to  the  dreiserian  pen.  But  it  is  spoiled 
and  made  a  mock  of  by  a  donkeyish  solemnity  of 
attack  which  leaves  it,  on  the  one  hand,  diffuse, 
spineless  and  shapeless,  and  on  the  other  hand,  a 
compendium  of  platitudes.  It  is  as  if  Dreiser,  sud 
denly  discovering  himself  a  sage,  put  off  the  high 
passion  of  the  artist  and  took  to  pounding  a  pulpit. 
It  is  almost  as  if  he  deliberately  essayed  upon  a  bur 
lesque  of  himself.  The  book  is  an  endless  emission 
of  the  obvious,  with  touches  of  the  scandalous  to 
light  up  its  killing  monotony.  It  runs  to  736  pages 
of  small  type;  its  reading  is  an  unbearable  weari 
ness  to  the  flesh ;  in  the  midst  of  it  one  has  forgotten 
the  beginning  and  is  unconcerned  about  the  end. 
Mingled  with  all  the  folderol,  of  course,  there  is 
stuff  of  nobler  quality.  Certain  chapters  stick  in 


124  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

the  memory;  whole  episodes  lift  themselves  to  the 
fervid  luminosity  of  "Jennie  Gerhardt";  there  are 
character  sketches  that  deserve  all  praise;  one  often 
pulls  up  with  a  reminder  that  the  thing  is  the  work 
of  a  proficient  craftsman.  But  in  the  main  it  lum 
bers  and  jolts,  wabbles  and  bores.  A  sort  of  pon 
derous  imbecility  gets  into  it.  Both  in  its  elaborate 
devices  to  shake  up  the  pious  and  its  imposing 
demonstrations  of  what  every  one  knows,  it  somehow 
suggests  the  advanced  thinking  of  Greenwich  Vil 
lage.  I  suspect,  indeed,  that  the  vin  rouge  was  in 
Dreiser's  arteries  as  he  concocted  it.  He  was  at  the 
intellectual  menopause,  and  looking  back  somewhat 
wistfully  and  attitudinizingly  toward  the  goatish 
days  that  were  no  more. 

But  let  it  go!  A  novelist  capable  of  "Jennie 
Gerhardt"  has  rights,  privileges,  prerogatives.  He 
may,  if  he  will,  go  on  a  spiritual  drunk  now  and 
then,  and  empty  the  stale  bilges  of  his  soul.  Thack 
eray,  having  finished  "Vanity  Fair"  and  "Penden- 
nis,"  bathed  himself  in  the  sheep's  milk  of  "The 
Newcomes,"  and  after  "The  Virginians"  he  did 
"The  Adventures  of  Philip."  Zola,  with  "Ger 
minal,"  "La  Debacle"  and  "La  Terre"  behind  him, 
recreated  himself  horribly  with  "Fecondite."  Tol 
stoi,  after  "Anna  Karenina,"  wrote  "What  Is  Art?" 
Ibsen,  after  "Et  Dukkehjem"  and  "Gengangere," 


THEODORE  DREISER  125 

wrote  "Vildanden."  The  good  God  himself,  after 
all  the  magnificence  of  Kings  and  Chronicles, 
turned  Dr.  Frank  Crane  and  so  botched  his  Writ 
with  Proverbs.  ...  A  weakness  that  we  must  allow 
for.  Whenever  Dreiser,  abandoning  his  funda 
mental  scepticism,  yields  to  the  irrepressible  hu 
man  (and  perhaps  also  divine)  itch  to  label,  to 
moralize,  to  teach,  he  becomes  a  bit  absurd.  Ob 
serve  "The  'Genius,'  "  and  parts  of  "A  Hoosier 
Holiday"  and  of  "A  Traveler  at  Forty,"  and  of 
"Plays  of  the  Natural  and  the  Supernatural."  But 
in  this  very  absurdity,  it  seems  to  me,  there  is  a 
subtle  proof  that  his  fundamental  scepticism  is 
sound.  .  .  . 

I  mention  the  "Plays  of  the  Natural  and  the 
Supernatural."  They  are  ingenious  and  sometimes 
extremely  effective,  but  their  significance  is  not 
great.  The  two  that  are  "of  the  natural"  are  "The 
Girl  in  the  Coffin"  and  "Old  Ragpicker,"  the  first 
a  laborious  evocation  of  the  gruesome,  too  long  by 
half,  and  the  other  an  experiment  in  photographic 
realism,  with  a  pair  of  policemen  as  its  protago 
nists.  All  five  plays  "of  the  supernatural"  follow 
a  single  plan.  In  the  foreground,  as  it  were,  we  see 
a  sordid  drama  played  out  on  the  human  plane,  and 
in  the  background  (or  in  the  empyrean  above,  as 
you  choose)  we  see  the  operation  of  the  god-like 


126  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

imbecilities  which  sway  and  flay  us  all.  The  tech 
nical  trick  is  well  managed.  It  would  be  easy  for 
such  four-dimensional  pieces  to  fall  into  burlesque, 
but  in  at  least  two  cases,  to  wit,  in  "The  Blue 
Sphere"  and  "In  the  Dark,"  they  go  off  with  an  air. 
Superficially,  these  plays  "of  the  supernatural" 
seem  to  show  an  abandonment  to  the  wheezy,  black 
bombazine  mysticism  which  crops  up  toward 
the  end  of  "The  'Genius.' "  But  that  mysticism, 
at  bottom,  is  no  more  than  the  dreiserian 
scepticism  made  visible.  "For  myself,"  says 
Dreiser  somewhere,  "I  do  not  know  what  truth 
is,  what  beauty  is,  what  love  is,  what  hope  is." 
And  in  another  place:  "I  admit  a  vast  compulsion 
which  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  individual  desires 
or  tastes  or  impulses."  The  jokers  behind  the  arras 
pull  the  strings.  It  is  pretty,  but  what  is  it  all 
about?  .  .  .  The  criticism  which  deals  only  with 
externals  sees  "Sister  Carrie"  as  no  more  than  a 
deft  adventure  into  realism.  Dreiser  is  praised, 
when  he  is  praised  at  all,  for  making  Carrie  so  clear, 
for  understanding  her  so  well.  But  the  truth  is,  of 
course,  that  his  achievement  consists  precisely  in 
making  patent  the  impenetrable  mystery  of  her,  and 
of  the  tangled  complex  of  striving  and  aspiration  of 
which  she  is  so  helplessly  a  part.  It  is  in  this  sense 
that  "Sister  Carrie"  is  a  profound  work.  It  is  not 


THEODORE  DREISER  127 

a  book  of  glib  explanations,  of  ready  formulae;  it 
is,  above  all  else,  a  book  of  wonder.  .  .  . 

Of  "A  Traveler  at  Forty"  I  have  spoken  briefly. 
It  is  heavy  with  the  obvious;  the  most  interesting 
thing  in  it  is  the  fact  that  Dreiser  had  never  seen  St. 
Peter's  or  Piccadilly  Circus  until  he  was  too  old  for 
either  reverence  or  romance.  "A  Hoosier  Holi 
day"  is  far  more  illuminating,  despite  its  platitu- 
dinizing.  Slow  in  tempo,  discursive,  reflective,  in 
timate,  the  book  covers  a  vast  territory,  and  lingers 
in  pleasant  fields.  One  finds  in  it  an  almost  com 
plete  confession  of  faith,  artistic,  religious,  even 
political.  And  not  infrequently  that  confession 
takes  the  form  of  ingenuous  confidences — about  the 
fortunes  of  the  house  of  Dreiser,  the  dispersed 
Dreiser  clan,  the  old  neighbours  in  Indiana,  new 
friends  made  along  the  way.  In  "A  Traveler  at 
Forty"  Dreiser  is  surely  frank  enough  in  his  vivi 
sections;  he  seldom  forgets  a  vanity  or  a  wart.  In 
"A  Hoosier  Holiday"  he  goes  even  further;  he 
speculates  heavily  about  all  his  dramatis  personae, 
prodding  into  the  motives  behind  their  acts,  won 
dering  what  they  would  do  in  this  or  that  situation, 
forcing  them  painfully  into  laboratory  jars.  They 
become,  in  the  end,  not  unlike  characters  in  a  novel ; 
one  misses  only  the  neatness  of  a  plot.  Strangely 
enough,  the  one  personage  of  the  chronicle  who  re- 


128  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

mains  dim  throughout  is  the  artist.  Franklin  Booth, 
Dreiser's  host  and  companion  on  the  long  motor  ride 
from  New  York  to  Indiana,  and  the  maker  of  the 
book's  excellent  pictures.  One  gets  a  brilliant  etch 
ing  of  Booth's  father,  and  scarcely  less  vivid  por 
traits  of  Speed,  the  chauffeur;  of  various  persons 
encountered  on  the  way,  and  of  friends  and  rela 
tives  dredged  up  out  of  the  abyss  of  the  past.  But 
of  Booth  one  learns  little  save  that  he  is  a  Christian 
Scientist  and  a  fine  figure  of  a  man.  There  must 
have  been  much  talk  during  those  two  weeks  of 
careening  along  the  high-road,  and  Booth  must  have 
borne  some  part  in  it,  but  what  he  said  is  very 
meagrely  reported,  and  so  he  is  still  somewhat 
vague  at  the  end — a  personality  sensed  but  scarcely 
apprehended. 

However,  it  is  Dreiser  himself  who  is  the  chief 
character  of  the  story,  and  who  stands  out  from  it 
most  brilliantly.     One  sees  in  the  man  all  the  spe 
cial  marks  of  the  novelist:  his  capacity  for  photo 
graphic  and  relentless  observation,  his  insatiable 
//curiosity,  his  keen  zest  in  life  as  a  spectacle,  his 
//  comprehension  of  and  sympathy  for  the  poor  striv- 
/      ing  of  humble  folks,  his  endless  mulling  of  insol- 
\       uble  problems,  his  recurrent  Philistinism,  his  im- 
|     patience  of  restraints,  his  fascinated  suspicion  of 
messiahs,  his  passion  for  physical  beauty,  his  relish 


THEODORE  DREISER  129 

for  the  gaudy  drama  of  big  cities;  his  incurable 
Americanism.  The  panorama  that  he  enrols  runs 
the  whole  scale  of  the  colours;  it  is  a  series  of  ex 
traordinarily  vivid  pictures.  The  sombre  gloom  of 
the  Pennsylvania  hills,  with  Wilkes-Barre  lying 
among  them  like  a  gem;  the  procession  of  little 
country  towns,  sleepy  and  a  bit  hoggish;  the  flash  of 
Buffalo,  Cleveland,  Indianapolis;  the  gargantuan 
coal-pockets  and  ore-docks  along  the  Erie  shore; 
the  tinsel  summer  resorts;  the  lush  Indiana  farm 
lands,  with  their  stodgy,  bovine  people — all  of  these 
things  are  sketched  in  simply,  and  yet  almost  mag 
nificently.  I  know,  indeed,  of  no  book  which  better 
describes  the  American  hinterland.  Here  we  have 
no  idle  spying  by  a  stranger,  but  a  full-length  rep 
resentation  by  one  who  knows  the  thing  he  describes 
intimately,  and  is  himself  a  part  of  it.  Almost 
every  mile  of  the  road  travelled  has  been  Dreiser's 
own  road  in  life.  He  knew  those  unkempt  In 
diana  towns  in  boyhood;  he  wandered  in  the  In 
diana  woods;  he  came  to  Toledo,  Cleveland,  Buf 
falo  as  a  young  man;  all  the  roots  of  his  existence 
are  out  there.  And  so  he  does  his  chronicle  con 
amore,  with  many  a  sentimental  dredging  up  of 
old  memories,  old  hopes  and  old  dreams. 

Save  for  passages  in  "The  Titan,"  "A  Hoosier 
Holiday"  marks  the  high  tide  of  Dreiser's  writing 


130  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

— that  is,  as  sheer  writing.  His  old  faults  are  in  it, 
and  plentifully.  There  are  empty,  brackish 
phrases  enough,  God  knows — "high  noon"  among 
them.  But  for  all  that,  there  is  an  undeniable  glow 
in  it;  it  shows,  in  more  than  one  place,  an  approach 
to  style;  the  mere  wholesaler  of  words  has  become, 
in  some  sense  a  connoisseur,  even  a  voluptuary. 

SThe  picture  of  Wilkes-Barre  girt  in  by  her  hills  is 
simply  done,  and  yet  there  is  imagination  in  it,  and 
touches  of  brilliance.  The  sombre  beauty  of  the 
Pennsylvania  mountains  is  vividly  transferred  to  the 
page.  The  towns  by  the  wayside  are  differentiated, 
swiftly  drawn,  made  to  live.  There  are  excellent 
sketches  of  people — a  courtly  hotelkeeper  in  some 
God-forsaken  hamlet,  his  self-respect  triumphing 
y  over  his  wallow;  a  group  of  babbling  Civil  War 
veterans,  endlessly  mouthing  incomprehensible 
jests;  the  half -grown  beaux  and  belles  of  the  sum 
mer  resorts,  enchanted  and  yet  a  bit  staggered  by 
the  awakening  of  sex;  Booth  pere  and  his  sinister 
politics;  broken  and  forgotten  men  in  the  Indiana 
towns;  policemen,  waitresses,  farmers,  country 
characters;  Dreiser's  own  people — the  boys  and 
girls  of  his  youth;  his  brother  Paul,  the  Indiana 
Schneckenburger  and  Francis  Scott  Key;  his  sisters 
and  brothers;  his  beaten,  hopeless,  pious  father;  his 
brave  and  noble  mother.  The  book  is  dedicated  to 


THEODORE  DREISER  131 

this  mother,  now  long  dead,  and  in  a  way  it  is  a 
memorial  to  her,  a  monument  to  affection.  Life 
bore  upon  her  cruelly;  she  knew  poverty  at  its  lowest 
ebb  and  despair  at  its  bitterest;  and  yet  there  was  in 
her  a  touch  of  fineness  that  never  yielded,  a  gallant 
spirit  that  faced  and  fought  things  through.  One 
thinks,  somehow,  of  the  mother  of  Gounod.  .  .  . 
Her  son  has  not  forgotten  her.  His  book  is  her 
epitaph.  He  enters  into  her  presence  with  love  and 
with  reverence  and  with  something  not  far  from 
awe.  .  .  . 

As  for  the  rest  of  the  Dreiser  compositions,  I 
leave  them  to  your  curiosity. 


Dr.  William  Lyon  Phelps,  the  Lampson  profes 
sor  of  English  language  and  literature  at  Yale, 
opens  his  chapter  on  Mark  Twain  in  his  "Essays 
on  Modern  Novelists"  with  a  humorous  account 
of  the  critical  imbecility  which  pursued  Mark  in  his 
own  country  down  to  his  last  years.  The  favourite 
national  critics  of  that  era  (and  it  extended  to  1895, 
at  the  least)  were  wholly  blind  to  the  fact  that  he 
was  a  great  artist.  They  admitted  him,  somewhat 
grudgingly,  a  certain  low  dexterity  as  a  clown,  but 


132  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

that  he  was  an  imaginative  writer  of  the  first  rank, 
or  even  of  the  fifth  rank,  was  something  that,  in 
their  insanest  moments,  never  so  much  as  occurred 
to  them.  Phelps  cites,  in  particular,  an  ass  named 
Professor  Richardson,  whose  "American  Liter 
ature,"  it  appears,  "is  still  a  standard  work"  and  "a 
deservedly  high  authority" — apparently  in  col 
leges.  In  the  1892  edition  of  this  magnum  opus, 
Mark  is  dismissed  with  less  than  four  lines,  and 
ranked  below  Irving,  Holmes  and  Lowell — nay, 
actually  below  Artemus  Ward,  Josh  Billings  and 
Petroleum  V.  Nasby!  The  thing  is  fabulous,  fan 
tastic,  unglaublich — but  nevertheless  true.  Lack 
ing  the  "higher  artistic  or  moral  purpose  of  the 
greater  humourists"  (exempli  gratia,  Rabelais, 
Moliere,  Aristophanes! ! ) ,  Mark  is  dismissed  by  this 
Professor  Balderdash  as  a  hollow  buffoon.  .  .  . 
But  stay !  Do  not  laugh  yet !  Phelps  himself,  indig 
nant  at  the  stupidity,  now  proceeds  to  credit  Mark 
with  a  moral  purpose!  .  .  .  Turn  to  "The  Myste 
rious  Stranger,"  or  "What  is  Man?".  .  . 
(  College  professors,  alas,  never  learn  anything. 
The  identical  gentleman  who  achieved  this  dis 
covery  about  old  Mark  in  1910,  now  seeks  to  dis 
pose  of  Dreiser  in  the  exact  manner  of  Richardson. 
That  is  to  say,  he  essays  to  finish  him  by  putting  him 


THEODORE  DREISER  133 

into  Coventry,  by  loftily  passing  over  him.  "Do 
not  speak  of  him,"  said  Kingsley  of  Heine;  "he  was 
a  wicked  man!"  Search  the  latest  volume  of  the 
Phelps  revelation,  "The  Advance  of  the  English 
Novel,"  and  you  will  find  that  Dreiser  is  not  once 
mentioned  in  it.  The  late  0.  Henry  is  hailed  as  a 
genius  who  will  have  "abiding  fame";  Henry  Syd- 
nor  Harrison  is  hymned  as  "more  than  a  clever 
novelist,"  nay,  "a  valuable  ally  of  the  angels"  (the 
right-thinker  complex!  art  as  a  form  of  snuffling!), 
and  an  obscure  Pagliaccio  named  Charles  D.  Stew 
art  is  brought  forward  as  "the  American  novelist 
most  worthy  to  fill  the  particular  vacancy  caused  by 
the  death  of  Mark  Twain" — but  Dreiser  is  not  even 
listed  in  the  index.  And  where  Phelps  leads  with 
his  baton  of  birch  most  of  the  other  drovers  of  rah- 
rah  boys  follow.  I  turn,  for  example,  to  "An  In 
troduction  to  American  Literature,"  by  Henry  S. 
Pancoast,  A.M.,  L.H.D.,  dated  1912.  There  are 
kind  words  for  Richard  Harding  Davis,  for  Amelie 
Rives,  and  even  for  Will  N.  Harben,  but  not  a 
syllable  for  Dreiser.  Again,  there  is  a  "A  History 
of  American  Literature,"  by  Reuben  Post  Halleck, 
A.M.,  LL.D.,  dated  1911.  Lew  Wallace,  Marietta 
Holley,  Owen  Wister  and  Augusta  Evans  Wilson 
have  their  hearings,  but  not  Dreiser.  Yet  again, 


134  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

there  is  "A  History  of  American  Literature  Since 
1870,"  by  Prof.  Fred  Lewis  Pattee,1  instructor  in 
"the  English  language  and  literature"  somewhere 
in  Pennsylvania.  Pattee  has  praises  for  Marion 
Crawford,  Margaret  Deland  and  F.  Hopkinson 
Smith,  and  polite  bows  for  Richard  Harding  Davis 
and  Robert  W.  Chambers,  but  from  end  to  end  of  his 
fat  tome  I  am  unable  to  find  the  slightest  mention  of 
Dreiser. 

So  much  for  one  group  of  heroes  of  the  new 
Dunciad.  That  it  includes  most  of  the  acknowl 
edged  heavyweights  of  the  craft — the  Babbitts, 
Mores,  Brownells  and  so  on — goes  without  saying; 
as  Van  Wyck  Brooks  has  pointed  out,2  these  mag- 
nificoes  are  austerely  above  any  consideration  of 
the  literature  that  is  in  being.  The  other  group, 
more  courageous  and  more  honest,  proceeds  by 
direct  attack;  Dreiser  is  to  be  disposed  of  by  a 
moral  attentat.  Its  leaders  are  two  more  profes 
sors,  Stuart  P.  Sherman  and  H.  W.  Boynton,  and  in 
its  ranks  march  the  lady  critics  of  the  newspapers, 
with  much  shrill,  falsetto  clamour.  Sherman  is 
the  only  one  of  them  who  shows  any  intelligible 
reasoning.  Boynton,  as  always,  is  a  mere  parroter 
of  conventional  phrases,  and  the  objections  of  the 

1  New  York,  The  Century  Co.,  1916. 

2  In  The  Seven  Arts,  May,  1917. 


THEODORE  DREISER  135 

ladies  fade  imperceptibly  into  a  pious  indignation 
which  is  indistinguishable  from  that  of  the  profes 
sional  suppressors  of  vice. 

What,  then,  is  Sherman's  complaint?  In  brief, 
that  Dreiser  is  a  liar  when  he  calls  himself  a  realist; 
that  he  is  actually  a  naturalist,  and  hence  accursed. 
That  "he  has  evaded  the  enterprise  of  representing 
human  conduct,  and  confined  himself  to  a  represen 
tation  of  animal  behaviour."  That  he  "imposes 
his  own  naturalistic  philosophy"  upon  his  charac 
ters,  making  them  do  what  they  ought  not  to  do,  and 
think  what  they  ought  not  to  think.  That  "he  has 
just  two  things  to  tell  us  about  Frank  Cowperwood : 
that  he  has  a  rapacious  appetite  for  money,  and  a 
rapacious  appetite  for  women."  That  this  alleged 
"theory  of  animal  behaviour"  is  not  only  incorrect 
but  downright  immoral,  and  that  "when  one-half 
the  world  attempts  to  assert  it,  the  other  half  rises 
in  battle."  x 

Only  a  glance  is  needed  to  show  the  vacuity  of 
all  this  brutum  fulmen.  Dreiser,  in  point  of  fact,  is 
scarcely  more  the  realist  or  the  naturalist,  in  any 
true  sense,  than  H.  G.  Wells  or  the  later  George 
Moore,  nor  has  he  ever  announced  himself  in  either 
the  one  character  or  the  other — if  there  be,  in  fact, 
any  difference  between  them  that  any  one  save  a 

i  The  Nation,  Dec.  2, 


136  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

pigeon-holding  pedagogue  can  discern.  He  is 
really  something  quite  different,  and,  in  his  mo 
ments,  something  far  more  stately.  His  aim  is  not 
merely  to  record,  but  to  translate  and  understand; 
the  thing  he  exposes  is  not  the  empty  event  and  act, 
but  the  endless  mystery  out  of  which  it  springs;  his 
pictures  have  a  passionate  compassion  in  them  that 
it  is  hard  to  separate  from  poetry.  If  this  sense  of 
the  universal  and  inexplicable  tragedy,  if  this  vision 
of  life  as  a  seeking  without  a  finding,  if  this  adept 
summoning  up  of  moving  images,  is  mistaken  by 
college  professors  for  the  empty,  meticulous  nasti- 
ness  of  Zola  in  "Pot-Bouille" — in  Nietzsche's 
phrase,  for  "the  delight  to  stink" — then  surely  the 
folly  of  college  professors,  as  vast  as  it  seems,  has 
been  underestimated.  What  is  the  fact?  The  fact 
is  that  Dreiser's  attitude  of  mind,  his  manner  of  re 
action  to  the  phenomena  he  represents,  the  whole 
of  his  alleged  "naturalistic  philosophy,"  stems 
directly,  not  from  Zola,  Flaubert,  Augier  and  the 
younger  Dumas,  but  from  the  Greeks.  In  the  midst 
of  democratic  cocksureness  and  Christian  senti- 
mentalism,  of  doctrinaire  shallowness  and  profes 
sorial  smugness,  he  stands  for  a  point  of  view  which 
at  least  has  something  honest  and  courageous  about 
it;  here,  at  all  events,  he  is  a  realist.  Let  him  put 
a  motto  to  his  books,  and  it  might  be: 


THEODORE  DREISER  137 

Io>  yeveat  /ftporwy, 
cfis  i'/>tas  tcra  xa^  TO 
Ztocras 


If  you  protest  against  that  as  too  harsh  for 
Christians  and  college  professors,  right-thinkers  and 
forward-lookers,  then  you  protest  against  "Oedi 
pus  Rex."  x 

As  for  the  animal  behaviour  prattle  of  the  learned 
head-master,  it  reveals,  on  the  one  hand,  only  the 
academic  fondness  for  seizing  upon  high-sounding 
but  empty  phrases  and  using  them  to  alarm  the  pop 
ulace,  and  on  the  other  hand,  only  the  academic  in 
capacity  for  observing  facts  correctly  and  report 
ing  them  honestly.  The  truth  is,  of  course,  that 
the  behaviour  of  such  men  as  Cowperwood  and 
Witla  and  of  such  women  as  Carrie  and  Jennie,  as 
Dreiser  describes  it,  is  no  more  merely  animal  than 
the  behaviour  of  such  acknowledged  and  undoubted 
human  beings  as  Woodrow  Wilson  and  Jane  Ad- 
dams.  The  whole  point  of  the  story  of  Witla, 
to  take  the  example  which  seems  to  concern  the 
horrified  watchmen  most,  is  this:  that  his  life  is  a 
bitter  conflict  between  the  animal  in  him  and  the 
aspiring  soul,  between  the  flesh  and  the  spirit,  be- 

1  1186-1189.  So  translated  by  Floyd  Dell:  "O  ye  deathward- 
going  tribes  of  man,  what  do  your  lives  mean  except  that  they 
go  to  nothingness?" 


138  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

tween  what  is  weak  in  him  and  what  is  strong,  be 
tween  what  is  base  and  what  is  noble.  Moreover, 
the  good,  in  the  end,  gets  its  hooks  into  the  bad: 
as  we  part  from  Witla  he  is  actually  bathed  in  the 
tears  of  remorse,  and  resolved  to  be  a  correct  and 
godfearing  man.  And  what  have  we  in  "The 
Financier"  and  "The  Titan"?  A  conflict,  in  the 
ego  of  Cowperwood,  between  aspiration  and  am 
bition,  between  the  passion  for  beauty  and  the 
passion  for  power.  Is  either  passion  animal?  To 
ask  the  question  is  to  answer  it. 

I  single  out  Dr.  Sherman,  not  because  his  pomp 
ous  syllogisms  have  any  plausibility  in  fact  or 
logic,  but  simply  because  he  may  well  stand  as 
archetype  of  the  booming,  indignant  corrupter  of 
criteria,  the  moralist  turned  critic.  A  glance  at 
his  paean  to  Arnold  Bennett 1  at  once  reveals  the 
true  gravamen  of  his  objection  to  Dreiser.  What 
offends  him  is  not  actually  Dreiser's  shortcoming 
as  an  artist,  but  Dreiser's  shortcoming  as  a  Chris 
tian  and  an  American.  In  Bennett's  volumes  of 
pseudo-philosophy — e.g.,  "The  Plain  Man  and 
His  Wife-"  and  "The  Feast  of  St.  Friend"— he 
finds  the  intellectual  victuals  that  are  to  his  taste. 
Here  we  have  a  sweet  commingling  of  virtuous  con 
formity  and  complacent  optimism,  of  sonorous 

i  The  New  York  Evening  Post,  Dec.  31,  1915. 


THEODORE  DREISER 139 

platitude  and  easy  certainty — here,  in  brief,  we 
have  the  philosophy  of  the  English  middle  classes 
— and  here,  by  the  same  token,  we  have  the  sort 
of  guff  that  the  half -educated  of  our  own  country 
can  understand.  It  is  the  calm,  superior  num- 
skullery  that  was  Victorian;  it  is  by  Samuel  Smiles 
out  of  Hannah  More.  The  offence  of  Dreiser  is 
that  he  has  disdained  this  revelation  and  gone  back 
to  the  Greeks.  Lo,  he  reads  poetry  into  "the  ap 
petite  for  women" — he  rejects  the  Pauline  doctrine 
that  all  love  is  below  the  diaphragm!  He  thinks 
of  Ulysses,  not  as  a  mere  heretic  and  criminal,  but 
as  a  great  artist.  He  sees  the  life  of  man,  not  as 
a  simple  theorem  in  Calvinism,  but  as  a  vast  ad 
venture,  an  enchantment,  a  mystery.  It  is  no  won 
der  that  respectable  school-teachers  are  against 
him.  .  .  . 

The  comstockian  attack  upon  "The  'Genius' ' 
seems  to  have  sprung  out  of  the  same  muddled 
sense  of  Dreiser's  essential  hostility  to  all  that  is 
safe  and  regular — of  the  danger  in  him  to  that 
mellowed  Methodism  which  has  become  the  na 
tional  ethic.  The  book,  in  a  way,  was  a  direct 
challenge,  for  though  it  came  to  an  end  upon  a 
note  which  even  a  Methodist  might  hear  as  sweet, 
there  were  undoubted  provocations  in  detail. 
Dreiser,  in  fact,  allowed  his  scorn  to  make  off  with 


140  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

his  taste — and  es  ist  nichts  furchterlicher  als  Einbil- 
dungskraft  ohne  Geschmack.  The  Comstocks 
arose  to  the  bait  a  bit  slowly,  but  none  the  less 
surely.  Going  through  the  volume  with  the  ter 
rible  industry  of  a  Sunday-school  boy  dredging 
up  pearls  of  smut  from  the  Old  Testament,  they 
achieved  a  list  of  no  less  than  89  alleged  floutings 
of  the  code — 75  described  as  lewd  and  14  as  pro 
fane.  An  inspection  of  these  specifications  affords 
mirth  of  a  rare  and  lofty  variety;  nothing  could 
more  cruelly  expose  the  inner  chambers  of  the 
moral  mind.  When  young  Witla,  fastening  his 
best  girl's  skate,  is  so  overcome  by  the  carnality  of 
youth  that  he  hugs  her,  it  is  set  down  as  lewd.  On 
page  51,  having  become  an  art  student,  he  is  fired 
by  "a  great,  warm-tinted  nude  of  Bouguereau" — 
lewd  again.  On  page  70  he  begins  to  draw  from 
the  figure,  and  his  instructor  cautions  him  that  the 
female  breast  is  round,  not  square — more  lewd- 
ness.  On  page  151  he  kisses  a  girl  on  mouth  and 
neck  and  she  cautions  him:  "Be  careful! 
Mamma  may  come  in" — still  more.  On  page  161, 
having  got  rid  of  mamma,  she  yields  "herself  to 
him  gladly,  joyously"  and  he  is  greatly  shocked 
when  she  argues  that  an  artist  (she  is  by  way  of 
being  a  singer)  had  better  not  marry — lewdness 
doubly  damned.  On  page  245  he  and  his  bride, 


THEODORE  DREISER  141 

being  ignorant,  neglect  the  principles  laid  down  by 
Dr.  Sylvanus  Stall  in  his  great  works  on  sex  hy 
giene — lewdness  most  horrible!  But  there  is  no 
need  to  proceed  further.  Every  kiss,  hug  and 
tickle  of  the  chin  in  the  chronicle  is  laboriously 
snouted  out,  empanelled,  exhibited.  Every  hint 
that  Witla  is  no  vestal,  that  he  indulges  his  un 
christian  fleshliness,  that  he  burns  in  the  manner 
of  I  Corinthians,  VII,  9,  is  uncovered  to  the  moral 
inquisition. 

On  the  side  of  profanity  there  is  a  less  ardent 
pursuit  of  evidences,  chiefly,  I  daresay,  because 
their  unearthing  is  less  stimulating.  (Beside,  there 
is  no  law  prohibiting  profanity  in  books :  the  whole 
inquiry  here  is  but  so  much  lagniappe.)  On  page 
408,  in  describing  a  character  called  Daniel  G. 
Summerfield,  Dreiser  says  that  the  fellow  is  "very 
much  given  to  swearing,  more  as  a  matter  of  habit 
than  of  foul  intention,"  and  then  goes  on  to  explain 
somewhat  lamely  that  "no  picture  of  him  would  be 
complete  without  the  interpolation  of  his  various 
expressions."  They  turn  out  to  be  God  damn  and 
Jesus  Christ — three  of  the  latter  and  five  or  six  of 
the  former.  All  go  down;  the  pure  in  heart  must 
be  shielded  from  the  knowledge  of  them.  (But 
what  of  the  immoral  French?  They  call  the  Eng 
lish  Goddams.)  Also,  three  plain  damns,  eight 


142  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

hells,  one  my  God,  five  by  Gods,  one  go  to  the  devil, 
one  God  Almighty  and  one  plain  God.  Altogether, 
31  specimens  are  listed.  "The  'Genius'  "  runs  to 
350,000  words.  The  profanity  thus  works  out  to 
somewhat  less  than  one  word  in  10,000.  .  .  .  Alas, 
the  comstockian  proboscis,  feeling  for  such  offend- 
ings,  is  not  as  alert  as  when  uncovering  more  sav 
oury  delicacies.  On  page  191  I  find  an  overlooked 
by  God.  On  page  372  there  are  Oh  God,  God 
curse  her,  and  God  strike  her  dead.  On  page  373 
there  are  Ah  God,  Oh  God  and  three  other  invoca 
tions  of  God.  On  page  617  there  is  God  help  me. 
On  page  720  there  is  as  God  is  my  judge.  On  page 
723  there  is  Tm  no  damned  good.  .  .  .  But  I  be 
gin  to  blush. 

When  the  Comstock  Society  began  proceedings 
against  "The  'Genius,'  "  a  group  of  English  novel 
ists,  including  Arnold  Bennett,  H.  G.  Wells,  W.  L. 
George  and  Hugh  Walpole,  cabled  an  indignant 
caveat.  This  bestirred  the  Author's  League  of 
America  to  activity,  and  its  executive  committee 
issued  a  minute  denouncing  the  business.  Later 
on  a  protest  of  American  literati  was  circulated, 
and  more  than  400  signed,  including  such  highly 
respectable  authors  as  Winston  Churchill,  Percy 
MacKaye,  Booth  Tarkington  and  James  Lane  Allen, 
and  such  critics  as  Lawrence  Gilman,  Clayton 


THEODORE  DREISER  143 

Hamilton  and  James  Huneker,  and  the  editors  of 
such  journals  as  the  Century,  the  Atlantic  Monthly 
and  the  New  Republic.  Among  my  literary  lum 
ber  is  all  the  correspondence  relating  to  this  pro 
test,  not  forgetting  the  letters  of  those  who  refused 
to  sign,  and  some  day  I  hope  to  publish  it,  that 
posterity  may  not  lose  the  joy  of  an  extremely  di 
verting  episode.  The  case  attracted  wide  attention 
and  was  the  theme  of  an  extraordinarily  violent 
discussion,  but  the  resultant  benefits  to  Dreiser 
were  more  than  counterbalanced,  I  daresay,  by  the 
withdrawal  of  "The  'Genius'  "  itself.1 


Dreiser,  like  Mark  Twain  and  Emerson  before 
him,  has  been  far  more  hospitably  greeted  in  his 
first  stage,  now  drawing  to  a  close,  in  England 
than  in  his  own  country.  The  cause  of  this,  I  dare 
say,  lies  partly  in  the  fact  that  "Sister  Carrie"  was 
in  general  circulation  over  there  during  the  seven 
years  that  it  remained  suppressed  on  this  side.  It 
was  during  these  years  that  such  men  as  Arnold 
Bennett,  Theodore  Watts-Dunton,  Frank  Harris  and 

i  Despite  the  comstockian  attack,  Dreiser  is  still  fairlv  well 
represented  on  the  shelves  of  American  public  libraries.  A 
canvas  of  the  libraries  of  the  25  principal  cities  gives  the  fol 
lowing  result,  an  X  indicating  that  the  corresponding  book 
is  catalogued,  and  a  —  that  is  not:  [Over] 


144  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

H.  G.  Wells,  and  such  critical  journals  as  the  Spec 
tator,  the  Saturday  Review  and  the  Athenaeum  be- 


New  York    

I 

a 

i 

£ 
X 

I  Jennie  Gerhardt 

I  The  Financier 

1 

H 

OJ 

e 

V 

b* 

1 

fe 

-M 

e3 

»_ 

f^H 

*3 

S_, 

< 

V 

"w 

3 

1 

% 

Y 

'cj 
t-> 

1 
£ 

1 

«+H 

0 

WJ 

& 

E 

Y 

X  A  Hoosier  Holiday 

Boston       

V 

V 

_ 

Chicago 

.   X 

x 

V 

x 

V 

Y 

Y 

V 

Philadelphia 

x 

V 

V 

V 

V 

Y 

Y 

Y 

x 

Y 

Baltimore 

x 

Pittsburgh        

V 

V 

V 

Y 

Y 

_ 

Denver 

...   X 

x 

x 

V 

V 

Y 

Y 

Y 

x 

V 

V 

x 

V 

Y 

St.  Louis  

x 

V 

V 

x 

V 

_ 

Y 

Cleveland                

x 

V 

V 

V 

Y 

Y 

_ 

_ 

_ 

Los  Angeles 

x 

x 

V 

V 

V 

Y 

Y 

Y 

Indianapolis          

x 

X 

V 

V 

Y 

Y 

x 

Y 

V 

V 

Y 

Y 

Y 

St    Paul 

x 

V 

V 

Y 

Y 

x 

V 

V 

_ 

V 

_ 

Y 

Cincinnati 

...    X 

V 

V 

V 

Y 

V 

Kansas  City         

x 

x 

V 

V 

V 

Y 

Y 

Y 

X 

Y 

X 

Newark                 

x 

V 

V 

x 

V 

Y 

Y 

Y 

Detroit   

x 

V 

V 

V 

Y 

Y 

Y 

Seattle                         .    . 

x 

V 

Y 

Y 

Y 

Hartford   

_ 

_ 

_ 

Y 

[ 

Ovei 

•1 

THEODORE  DREISER  145 

came  aware  of  him,  and  so  laid  the  foundations  of 
a  sound  appreciation  of  his  subsequent  work. 
Since  the  beginning  of  the  war,  certain  English 
newspapers  have  echoed  the  alarmed  American  dis 
covery  that  he  is  a  literary  agent  of  the  Wilhelm- 
strasse,  but  it  is  to  the  honour  of  the  English  that 
this  imbecility  has  got  no  countenance  from  repu 
table  authority  and  has  not  injured  his  position. 

At  home,  as  I  have  shown,  he  is  less  fortunate. 
When  criticism  is  not  merely  an  absurd  effort  to 
chase  him  out  of  court  because  his  ideas  are  not 
orthodox,  as  the  Victorians  tried  to  chase  out 
Darwin  and  Swinburne,  and  their  predecessors 
pursued  Shelley  and  Byron,  it  is  too  often  designed 
to  identify  him  with  some  branch  or  other  of  "radi 
cal"  poppycock,  and  so  credit  him  with  purposes 
he  has  never  imagined.  Thus  Chautauqua  pulls 
and  Greenwich  Village  pushes.  In  the  middle 

This  table  shows  that  but  two  libraries,  those  of  Providence 
and  New  Orleans,  bar  Dreiser  altogether.  The  effect  of  alarms 
from  newspaper  reviewers  is  indicated  by  the  scant  distribu 
tion  of  the  The  "Genius,"  which  is  barred  by  14  of  the  25.  It 
should  be  noted  that  sonic  of  these  libraries  issue  certain  of 
the  books  only  under  restrictions.  This  I  know  to  be  the  case 
in  Louisville,  Los  Angeles,  Newark  and  Cleveland.  The  New 
ark  librarian  informs  me  that  Jennie  Gerhardt  is  to  be  re 
moved  altogether,  presumably  in  response  to  some  protest  from 
local  Comstocks.  In  Chicago  The  "Genius"  has  been  stolen, 
and  on  account  of  the  withdrawal  of  the  book  the  Public  Lib 
rary  has  been  unable  to  get  another  copy. 


146  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

ground  there  proceeds  the  pedantic  effort  to  dis 
pose  of  him  by  labelling  him.  One  faction  main 
tains  that  he  is  a  realist;  another  calls  him  a  nat 
uralist;  a  third  argues  that  he  is  really  a  disguised 
romanticist.  This  debate  is  all  sound  and  fury, 
signifying  nothing,  but  out  of  it  has  come  a  valua 
tion  by  Lawrence  Gilman  *  which  perhaps  strikes 
very  close  to  the  truth.  He  is,  says  Mr.  Gilman, 
"a  sentimental  mystic  who  employs  the  mimetic 
gestures  of  the  realist."  This  judgment  is  apt  in 
particular  and  sound  in  general.  No  such  thing 
as  a  pure  method  is  possible  in  the  novel.  Plain 
realism,  as  in  Gorky's  "Nachtasyl"  and  the  war 
stories  of  Ambrose  Bierce,  simply  wearies  us  by 
its  vacuity;  plain  romance,  if  we  ever  get  beyond 
our  nonage,  makes  us  laugh.  It  is  their  artistic 
combination,  as  in  life  itself,  that  fetches  us — the 
subtle  projection  of  the  concrete  muddle  that  is 
living  against  the  ideal  orderliness  that  we  reach 
out  for — the  eternal  war  of  experience  and  aspira 
tion — the  contrast  between  the  world  as  it  is  and 
the  world  as  it  might  be  or  ought  to  be.  Dreiser 
describes  the  thing  that  he  sees,  laboriously  and 
relentlessly,  but  he  never  forgets  the  dream  that  is 
behind  it.  "He  gives  you,"  continues  Mr.  Gilman, 
"a  sense  of  actuality;  but  he  gives  you  more  than 

i  The  North  American  Review,  Feb.,  1916. 


THEODORE  DREISER  147 

that:  out  of  the  vast  welter  and  surge,  the  plethoric 
irrelevancies,  .  .  .  emerges  a  sense  of  the  infinite 
sadness  and  mystery  of  human  life."  .  .  ,1 

"To  see  truly,"  said  Renan,  "is  to  see  dimly." 
Dimness  or  mystery,  call  it  what  you  will:  it  is  in 
all  these  overgrown  and  formless,  but  profoundly 
moving  books.  Just  what  do  they  mean?  Just 
what  is  Dreiser  driving  at?  That  such  questions 
should  be  asked  is  only  a  proof  of  the  straits  to 
which  pedagogy  has  brought  criticism.  The  an 
swer  is  simple:  he  is  driving  at  nothing,  he  is 
merely  trying  to  represent  what  he  sees  and  feels. 
His  moving  impulse  is  no  flabby  yearning  to  teach, 
to  expound,  to  make  simple;  it  is  that  "obscure 
inner  necessity"  of  which  Conrad  tells  us,  the  ir 
resistible  creative  passion  of  a  genuine  artist,  stand 
ing  spell-bound  before  the  impenetrable  enigma 
that  is  life,  enamoured  by  the  strange  beauty  that 
plays  over  its  sordidness,  challenged  to  a  wonder 
ing  and  half -terrified  sort  of  representation  of  what 
passes  understanding.  And  jenseits  von  Gut  und 
Bose.  "For  myself,"  says  Dreiser,  "I  do  not  know 
what  truth  is,  what  beauty  is,  what  love  is,  what 
hope  is.  I  do  not  believe  any  one  absolutely  and 
I  do  not  doubt  any  one  absolutely.  I  think  peo- 

*  Another  competent  valuation,  by  Randolph  Bourne,  is  in 
The  Dial,  June  14,  1917. 


148  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

pie  are  both  evil  and  well-intentioned."  The  hatch 
ing  of  the  Dreiser  bugaboo  is  here;  it  is  the  flat 
rejection  of  the  rubber-stamp  formulae  that  out 
rages  petty  minds;  not  being  "good,"  he  must  be 
"evil" — as  William  Blake  said  of  Milton,  a  true 
poet  is  always  "of  the  devil's  party."  But  in  that 
very  groping  toward  a  light  but  dimly  seen  there 
is  a  measure,  it  seems  to  me,  of  Dreiser's  rank  and 
consideration  as  an  artist.  "Now  comes  the  pub 
lic,"  says  Hermann  Bahr,  "and  demands  that  we 
explain  what  the  poet  is  trying  to  say.  The  answer 
is  this:  If  we  knew  exactly  he  would  not  be  a 
poet.  .  .  ." 


III.    JAMES  HUNEKER 


Ill 

JAMES   HUNEKER 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE,  I  am  fond  of  believ- 
ing,  earned  as  a  critic  a  good  deal  of  the 
excess  of  praise  that  he  gets  as  a  romancer 
and  a  poet,  and  another  over-estimated  American 
dithyrambist,  Sidney  Lanier,  wrote  the  best  text 
book  of  prosody  in  English;  *  but  in  general  the 
critical  writing  done  in  the  United  States  has  been 
of  a  low  order,  and  most  American  writers  of  any 
genuine  distinction,  like  most  American  painters 
and  musicians,  have  had  to  wait  for  understanding 
until  it  appeared  abroad.  The  case  of  Emerson 
is  typical.  At  thirty,  he  was  known  in  New  Eng 
land  as  a  heretical  young  clergyman  and  no  more, 
and  his  fame  threatened  to  halt  at  the  tea-tables  of 
the  Boston  Brahmins.  It  remained  for  Landor  and 
Carlyle,  in  a  strange  land,  to  discern  his  higher 
potentialities,  and  to  encourage  him  to  his  real  life- 
work.  Mark  Twain,  as  I  have  hitherto  shown,  suf- 

iThe  Science  of  English  Verse;  New  York,  Scribner,  1880. 
151 


152  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

fered  from  the  same  lack  of  critical  perception  at 
home.  He  was  quickly  recognized  as  a  funny  fel 
low,  true  enough,  but  his  actual  stature  was  not 
even  faintly  apprehended,  and  even  after  "Huckle 
berry  Finn"  he  was  still  bracketed  with  such  labo 
rious  farceurs  as  Artemus  Ward.  It  was  Sir  Wal 
ter  Besant,  an  Englishman,  who  first  ventured  to  put 
him  on  his  right  shelf,  along  with  Swift,  Cervantes 
and  Moliere.  As  for  Poe  and  Whitman,  the  na 
tive  recognition  of  their  genius  was  so  greatly  con 
ditioned  by  a  characteristic  horror  of  their  immor 
ality  that  it  would  be  absurd  to  say  that  their  own 
country  understood  them.  Both  were  better  and 
more  quickly  apprehended  in  France,  and  it  was 
in  France,  not  in  America,  that  each  founded  a 
school.  What  they  had  to  teach  we  have  since  got 
back  at  second  hand — the  tale  of  mystery,  which 
was  Poe's  contribution,  through  Gaboriau  and 
Boisgobey;  and  vers  libre,  which  was  Whitman's, 
through  the  French  imagistes. 

The  cause  of  this  profound  and  almost  unbroken 
lack  of  critical  insight  and  enterprise,  this  puerile 
Philistinism  and  distrust  of  ideas  among  us,  is 
partly  to  be  found,  it  seems  to  me,  in  the  fact  that 
the  typical  American  critic  is  quite  without  any 
adequate  cultural  equipment  for  the  office  he  pre 
sumes  to  fill.  Dr.  John  Dewey,  in  some  late  re- 


JAMES  HUNEKER  153 

marks  upon  the  American  universities,  has  perhaps 
shown  the  cause  thereof.  The  trouble  with  our 
educational  method,  he  argues,  is  that  it  falls  be 
tween  the  two  stools  of  English  humanism  and  Ger 
man  relentlessness — that  it  produces  neither  a  man 
who  intelligently  feels  nor  a  man  who  thoroughly 
knows.  Criticism,  in  America,  is  a  function  of 
this  half -educated  and  conceited  class;  it  is  not  a 
popular  art,  but  an  esoteric  one;  even  in  its  crass 
est  journalistic  manifestations  it  presumes  to  a 
certain  academic  remoteness  from  the  concerns  and 
carnalities  of  everyday.  In  every  aspect  it  shows 
the  defects  of  its  practitioners.  The  American 
critic  of  beautiful  letters,  in  his  common  incarna 
tion,  is  no  more  than  a  talented  sophomore,  or,  at 
best,  a  somewhat  absurd  professor.  He  suffers 
from  a  palpable  lack  of  solid  preparation;  he  has 
no  background  of  moving  and  illuminating  experi 
ence  behind  him;  his  soul  has  not  sufficiently  ad 
ventured  among  masterpieces,  nor  among  men. 
Imagine  a  Taine  or  a  Sainte-Beuve  or  a  Macaulay 
— man  of  the  world,  veteran  of  philosophies,  "lord 
of  life" — and  you  imagine  his  complete  antithesis. 
Even  on  the  side  of  mere  professional  knowledge, 
the  primary  material  of  his  craft,  he  always  ap 
pears  incompletely  outfitted.  The  grand  sweep 
and  direction  of  the  literary  currents  elude  him; 


154  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

he  is  eternally  on  the  surface,  chasing  bits  of  drift 
wood.  The  literature  he  knows  is  the  fossil  litera 
ture  taught  in  colleges — worse,  in  high  schools. 
It  must  be  dead  before  he  is  aware  of  it.  And  in 
particular  he  appears  ignorant  of  what  is  going 
forward  in  other  lands.  An  exotic  idea,  to  pene 
trate  his  consciousness,  must  first  become  stale,  and 
even  then  he  is  apt  to  purge  it  of  all  its  remaining 
validity  and  significance  before  adopting  it. 

This  has  been  true  since  the  earliest  days.  Em 
erson  himself,  though  a  man  of  unusual  discern 
ment  and  a  diligent  drinker  from  German  spigots, 
nevertheless  remained  a  dilettante  in  both  aesthetics 
and  metaphysics  to  the  end  of  his  days,  and  the 
incompleteness  of  his  equipment  never  showed  more 
plainly  than  in  his  criticism  of  books.  Lowell,  if 
anything,  was  even  worse ;  his  aesthetic  theory,  first 
and  last,  was  nebulous  and  superficial,  and  all  that 
remains  of  his  pleasant  essays  today  is  their  some 
what  smoky  pleasantness.  He  was  a  Charles  Dud 
ley  Warner  in  nobler  trappings,  but  still,  at  bottom, 
a  Charles  Dudley  Warner.  As  for  Poe,  though  he 
was  by  nature  a  far  more  original  and  penetrating 
critic  than  either  Emerson  or  Lowell,  he  was  enor 
mously  ignorant  of  good  books,  and  moreover,  he 
could  never  quite  throw  off  a  congenital  vulgarity 
of  taste,  so  painfully  visible  in  the  strutting  of  his 


JAMES  HUNEKER  155 

style.  The  man,  for  all  his  grand  dreams,  had  a 
shoddy  soul;  he  belonged  authentically  to  the  era 
of  cuspidors,  "females"  and  Sons  of  Temperance. 
His  occasional  affectation  of  scholarship  has  de 
ceived  no  one.  It  was  no  more  than  Yankee  blus 
ter;  he  constantly  referred  to  books  that  he  had 
never  read.  Beside,  the  typical  American  critic 
of  those  days  was  not  Poe,  but  his  arch-enemy, 
Rufus  Wilmot  Griswold,  that  almost  fabulous  ass — 
a  Baptist  preacher  turned  taster  of  the  beautiful. 
Imagine  a  Baptist  valuing  Balzac,  or  Moliere,  or 
Shakespeare,  or  Goethe — or  Rabelais! 

Coming  down  to  our  own  time,  one  finds  the 
same  endless  amateurishness,  so  characteristic  of 
everything  American,  from  politics  to  cookery — 
the  same  astounding  lack  of  training  and  vocation. 
Consider  the  solemn  ponderosities  of  the  pious  old 
maids,  male  and  female,  who  write  book  reviews 
for  the  newspapers.     Here  we  have  a  heavy  pre 
tension  to  culture,  a  campus  cocksureness,  a  la 
borious  righteousness — but  of  sound  aesthetic  un 
derstanding,  of  alertness  and  hospitality  to  ideas, 
not  a  trace.     The  normal  American  book  reviewer,  \ 
indeed,  is  an  elderly  virgin,  a  superstitious  blue-     1 
stocking,  an  apostle  of  Vassar  Kultur;  and  her  cus-    I 
tomary  attitude  of  mind  is  one  of  fascinated  horror,/' 
(The    Hamilton    Wright    Mabie    complex!     The 


156  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

"white  list"  of  novels!)  William  Dean  Howells, 
despite  a  certain  jauntiness  and  even  kittenishness 
of  manner,  was  spiritually  of  that  company.  For 
all  his  phosphorescent  heresies,  he  was  what  the  up- 
lifters  call  a  right-thinker  at  heart,  and  soaked  in 
the  national  tradition.  He  was  easiest  intrigued, 
not  by  force  and  originality,  but  by  a  sickly, 
Ladies'  Home  Journal  sort  of  piquancy;  it  was  this 
that  made  him  see  a  genius  in  the  Philadelphia 
Zola,  W.  B.  Trites,  and  that  led  him  to  hymn  an 
abusive  business  letter  by  Frank  A.  Munsey,  author 
of  "The  Boy  Broker"  and  "Afloat  in  a  Great  City," 
as  a  significant  human  document.  Moreover  How- 
ells  ran  true  to  type  in  another  way,  for  he  long 
reigned  as  the  leading  Anglo-Saxon  authority  on 
the  Russian  novelists  without  knowing,  so  far  as  I 
can  make  out,  more  than  ten  words  of  Russian. 
In  the  same  manner,  we  have  had  enthusiasts  for 
D'Annunzio  and  Mathilde  Serao  who  knew  no  Ital 
ian,  and  celebrants  of  Maeterlinck  and  Verhaeren 
whose  French  was  of  the  finishing  school,  and  Ibsen 
authorities  without  a  single  word  of  Dano-Nor- 
wegian — I  met  one  once  who  failed  to  recognize 
"Et  Dukkehjem"  as  the  original  title  of  "A  Doll's 
House," — and  performers  upon  Hauptmann  who 
could  no  more  read  "Die  Weber"  than  they  could 
decipher  a  tablet  of  Tiglath-Pileser  III. 


JAMES  HUNEKER  157 

Here  and  there,  of  course,  a  more  competent 
critic  of  beautiful  letters  flings  out  his  banner — 
for  example,  John  Macy,  Ludwig  Lewisohn,  Andre 
Tridon,  Francis  Hackett,  Van  Wyck  Brooks,  Bur 
ton  Rascoe,  E.  A.  Boyd,  Llewellyn  Jones,  Otto 
Heller,  J.  E.  Spingarn,  Lawrence  Oilman,  the  late 
J.  Percival  Pollard.  Well-informed,  intelligent, 
wide-eyed  men — but  only  four  of  them  even 
Americans,  and  not  one  of  them  with  a  wide 
audience,  or  any  appreciable  influence  upon 
the  main  stream  of  American  criticism.  Pollard's 
best  work  is  buried  in  the  perfumed  pages  of  Town 
Topics;  his  book  on  the  Munich  wits  and  drama 
tists  *  is  almost  unknown.  Heller  and  Lewisohn 
make  their  way  slowly;  a  patriotic  wariness,  I 
daresay,  mixes  itself  up  with  their  acceptance. 
Gilman  disperses  his  talents;  he  is  quite  as  much 
musician  as  critic  of  the  arts.  As  for  Macy,  I  re 
cently  found  his  "The  Spirit  of  American  Litera 
ture,"  2  by  long  odds  the  soundest,  wisest  book  on 
its  subject,  selling  for  fifty  cents  on  a  Fifth  avenue 
remainder  counter. 

How  many  remain?  A  few  competent  review 
ers  who  are  primarily  something  else — Harvey, 

i Masks  and  Minstrels  of  New  Germany;  Boston,  John  W. 
Luce  &  Co.,  1911. 

2  New  York,  Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.,  1913. 


158  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

Aikin,  Untermeyer  and  company.  A  few  young 
sters  on  the  newspapers,  struggling  against  the  busi 
ness  office.  And  then  a  leap  to  the  Victorians,  the 
crepe-clad  pundits,  the  bombastic  word-mongers  of 
the  campus  school — H.  W.  Boynton,  W.  C.  Brow- 
nell,  Paul  Elmer  More,  William  Lyon  Phelps, 
Frederick  Taber  Cooper  et  al.  Here,  undoubt 
edly,  we  have  learning  of  a  sort.  More,  it  ap 
pears,  once  taught  Sanskrit  to  the  adolescent  suf 
fragettes  of  Bryn  Mawr — an  enterprise  as  stimu 
lating  (and  as  intelligible)  as  that  of  setting  off 
fire-works  in  a  blind  asylum.  Phelps  sits  in  a 
chair  at  Yale.  Boynton  is  a  master  of  arts  in  Eng 
lish  literature,  whatever  that  may  mean.  Brow- 
nell  is  both  L.H.D.  and  Litt.D.,  thus  surpassing 
Samuel  Johnson  by  one  point,  and  Hazlitt,  Col 
eridge  and  Malone  by  two.  But  the  learning  of 
these  august  umbilicarii,  for  all  its  pretensions,  is 
precisely  the  sterile,  foppish  sort  one  looks  for  in 
second-rate  college  professors.  The  appearance  is 
there,  but  not  the  substance.  One  ingests  a  horse- 
doctor's  dose  of  words,  but  fails  to  acquire  any  il 
lumination.  Read  More  on  Nietzsche  a  if  you  want 
to  find  out  just  how  stupid  criticism  can  be,  and  yet 
show  the  outward  forms  of  sense.  Read  Phelps' 

iThe  Drift  of  Romanticism;  Boston,  Houghton  Mifflin  Co., 
1913. 


JAMES  HUNEKER  159 

"The  Advance  of  the  English  Novel"  1  if  you  would 
see  a  fine  art  treated  as  a  moral  matter,  and  great 
works  tested  by  the  criteria  of  a  small-town  Sunday- 
school,  and  all  sorts  of  childish  sentimentality 
whooped  up.  And  plough  through  Brownell's 
"Standards,"  2  if  you  have  the  patience,  and  then 
try  to  reduce  its  sonorous  platitudes  to  straight 
forward  and  defensible  propositions. 

§2 

Now  for  the  exception.  He  is,  of  course,  James 
Gibbons  Huneker,  the  solitary  lokanaan  in  this 
tragic  aesthetic  wilderness,  the  only  critic  among 
us  whose  vision  sweeps  the  whole  field  of  beauty, 
and  whose  reports  of  what  he  sees  there  show  any 
genuine  gusto.  That  gusto  of  his,  I  fancy,  is  two- 
thirds  of  his  story.  It  is  unquenchable,  contagious, 
inflammatory ;  he  is  the  only  performer  in  the  com* 
missioned  troupe  who  knows  how  to  arouse  his 
audience  to  anything  approaching  enthusiasm. 
The  rest,  even  including  Howells,  are  pedants  lec 
turing  to  the  pure  in  heart,  but  Huneker  makes  a 
joyous  story  of  it;  his  exposition,  transcending  the 
merely  expository,  takes  on  the  quality  of  an  ad- 

1  New  York,  Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.,  1916. 

2  New  York,  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  1917. 


160  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

venture  hospitably  shared.  One  feels,  reading 
him,  that  he  is  charmed  by  the  men  and  women  he 
writes  about,  and  that  their  ideas,  even  when  he 
rejects  them,  give  him  an  agreeable  stimulation. 
And  to  the  charm  that  he  thus  finds  and  exhibits 
in  others,  he  adds  the  very  positive  charm  of  his 
own  personality.  He  seems  a  man  who  has  found 
the  world  fascinating,  if  perhaps  not  perfect;  a 
friendly  and  good-humoured  fellow;  no  frigid 
scholiast,  but  something  of  an  epicure ;  in  brief,  the 
reverse  of  the  customary  maker  of  books  about 
books.  Compare  his  two  essays  on  Ibsen,  in 
"Egoists"  and  "Iconoclasts,"  to  the  general  body  of 
American  writing  upon  the  great  Norwegian.  The 
difference  is  that  between  a  portrait  and  a  Bertillon 
photograph,  Richard  Strauss  and  Czerny,  a  wed 
ding  and  an  autopsy.  Huneker  displays  Ibsen,  not 
as  a  petty  mystifier  of  the  women's  clubs,  but  as  a 
literary  artist  of  large  skill  and  exalted  passion, 
and  withal  a  quite  human  and  understandable 
man.  These  essays  were  written  at  the  height  of 
the  symbolism  madness;  in  their  own  way,  they 
even  show  some  reflection  of  it;  but  taking  them  in 
their  entirety,  how  clearly  they  stand  above  the 
ignorant  obscurantism  of  the  prevailing  criticism  of 
the  time — how  immeasurably  superior  they  are, 
for  example,  to  that  favourite  hymn-book  of  the 


JAMES  HUNEKER  161 

Ibsenites,  "The  Ibsen  Secret"  by  Jennette  Lee! 
For  the  causes  of  this  difference  one  need  not  seek 
far.  They  are  to  be  found  in  the  difference  be 
tween  the  bombastic  half-knowledge  of  a  school 
teacher  and  the  discreet  and  complete  knowledge 
of  a  man  of  culture.  Huneker  is  that  man  of  cul 
ture.  He  has  reported  more  of  interest  and  value 
than  any  other  American  critic,  living  or  dead,  but 
the  essence  of  his  criticism  does  not  lie  so  much  in 
what  he  specifically  reports  as  in  the  civilized  point 
of  view  from  which  he  reports  it.  He  is  a  true 
cosmopolitan,  not  only  in  the  actual  range  of  his 
adventurings,  but  also  and  more  especially  in  his 
attitude  of  mind.  His  world  is  not  America,  nor 
Europe,  nor  Christendom,  but  the  whole  universe 
of  beauty.  As  Jules  Simon  said  of  Taine:  "Aucun 
ecrivain  de  nos  jours  na  .  .  .  decouvert  plus 
d'horizons  varies  et  immenses" 

Need  anything  else  be  said  in  praise  of  a  critic? 
And  does  an  extravagance  or  an  error  here  and 
there  lie  validly  against  the  saying  of  it?  I  think 
not.  I  could  be  a  professor  if  I  would  and  show 
you  slips  enough — certain  ponderous  nothings  in 
the  Ibsen  essays,  already  mentioned;  a  too  easy 
bemusement  at  the  hands  of  Shaw;  a  vacillating 
over  Wagner;  a  habit  of  yielding  to  the  hocus- 
pocus  of  the  mystics,  particularly  Maeterlinck. 


162  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

On  the  side  of  painting,  I  am  told,  there  are  even 
worse  aberrations;  I  know  too  little  about  painting 
to  judge  for  myself.  But  the  list,  made  complete, 
would  still  not  be  over-long,  and  few  of  its  items 
would  be  important.  Huneker,  like  the  rest  of  us, 
has  sinned  his  sins,  but  his  judgments,  in  the  over 
whelming  main,  hold  water.  He  has  resisted  the 
lure  of  all  the  wild  movements  of  the  generation; 
the  tornadoes  of  doctrine  have  never  knocked  him 
over.  Nine  times  out  of  ten,  in  estimating  a  new 
man  in  music  or  letters,  he  has  come  curiously 
close  to  the  truth  at  the  first  attempt.  And  he  has 
always  announced  it  in  good  time;  his  solo  has  al 
ways  preceded  the  chorus.  He  was,  I  believe,  the 
first  American  (not  forgetting  William  Morton 
Payne  and  Hjalmar  Hjorth  Boyesen,  the  pioneers) 
to  write  about  Ibsen  with  any  understanding  of  the 
artist  behind  the  prophet's  mask;  he  was  the  first 
to  see  the  rising  star  of  Nietzsche  (this  was  back  in 
1888) ;  he  was  beating  a  drum  for  Shaw  the  critic 
before  ever  Shaw  the  dramatist  and  mob  philoso 
pher  was  born  (circa  1886-1890) ;  he  was  writing 
about  Hauptmann  and  Maeterlinck  before  they  had 
got  well  set  on  their  legs  in  their  own  countries; 
his  estimate  of  Sudermann,  bearing  date  of  1905, 
may  stand  with  scarcely  the  change  of  a  word  to 
day;  he  did  a  lot  of  valiant  pioneering  for  Strind- 


JAMES  HUNEKER  163 

berg,  Hervieu,  Stirner  and  Gorki,  and  later  on 
helped  in  the  pioneering  for  Conrad ;  he  was  in  the 
van  of  the  MacDowell  enthusiasts;  he  fought  for 
the  ideas  of  such  painters  as  Davies,  Lawson,  Luks, 
Sloan  and  Prendergest  (Americans  all,  by  the  way: 
an  answer  to  the  hollow  charge  of  exotic  obsession) 
at  a  time  when  even  Manet,  Monet  and  Degas  were 
laughed  at;  he  was  among  the  first  to  give  a  hand 
to  Frank  Norris,  Theodore  Dreiser,  Stephen  Crane 
and  H.  B.  Fuller.  In  sum,  he  gave  some  semblance 
of  reality  in  the  United  States,  after  other  men  had 
tried  and  failed,  to  that  great  but  ill-starred  revolt 
against  Victorian  pedantry,  formalism  and  senti 
mentality  which  began  in  the  early  90's.  It  would 
be  difficult,  indeed,  to  overestimate  the  practical 
value  to  all  the  arts  in  America  of  his  intellectual 
alertness,  his  catholic  hospitality  to  ideas,  his  ar 
tistic  courage,  and  above  all,  his  powers  of  per 
suasion.  It  was  not  alone  that  he  saw  clearly  what 
was  sound  and  significant;  it  was  that  he  managed, 
by  the  sheer  charm  of  his  writings,  to  make  a  few 
others  see  and  understand  it.  If  the  United  States 
is  in  any  sort  of  contact  today,  however  remotely, 
with  what  is  aesthetically  going  on  in  the  more 
civilized  countries — if  the  Puritan  tradition,  for  all 
its  firm  entrenchment,  has  eager  and  resourceful 
enemies  besetting  it — if  the  pall  of  Harvard  quasi- 


164  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

culture,  by  the  Oxford  manner  out  of  Calvinism, 
has  been  lifted  ever  so  little — there  is  surely  no 
man  who  can  claim  a  larger  share  of  credit  for  pre 
paring  the  way.  .  .  . 

§3 

Huneker  comes  out  of  Philadelphia,  that  de 
pressing  intellectual  slum,  and  his  first  writing  was 
for  the  Philadelphia  Evening  Bulletin.  He  is 
purely  Irish  in  blood,  and  is  of  very  respectable 
ancestry,  his  maternal  grandfather  and  godfather 
having  been  James  Gibbons,  the  Irish  poet  and 
patriot,  and  president  of  the  Fenian  Brotherhood 
in  America.  Once,  in  a  review  of  "The  Pathos  of 
Distance,"  I  ventured  the  guess  that  there  was  a 
German  strain  in  him  somewhere,  and  based  it  upon 
the  beery  melancholy  visible  in  parts  of  that  book. 
Who  but  a  German  sheds  tears  over  the  empty 
bottles  of  day  before  yesterday,  the  Adelaide  Neil- 
son  of  1877?  Who  but  a  German  goes  into  wool 
len  undershirts  at  45,  and  makes  his  will,  and  be 
gins  to  call  his  wife  "Mamma"?  The  green-sick 
ness  of  youth  is  endemic  from  pole  to  pole,  as  much 
so  as  measles;  but  what  race  save  the  wicked  one 
is  floored  by  a  blue  distemper  in  middle  age,  with 
sentimental  burblings  a  cappella,  hallucinations  of 


JAMES  HUNEKER  165 

lost  loves,  and  an  unquenchable  lacrymorrhea? 
...  I  made  out  a  good  case,  but  I  was  wrong,  and 
the  penalty  came  swiftly  and  doubly,  for  on  the 
one  hand  the  Boston  Transcript  sounded  an  alarm 
against  both  Huneker  and  me  as  German  spies,  and 
on  the  other  hand  Huneker  himself  proclaimed  that, 
even  spiritually,  he  was  less  German  than  Magyar, 
less  "Hun"  than  Hun.  "I  am,"  he  said,  "a  Celto- 
Magyar:  Pilsner  at  Donneybrook  Fair.  Even  the 
German  beer  and  cuisine  are  not  in  it  with  the 
Austro-Hungarian."  Here,  I  suspect,  he  meant  to 
say  Czech  instead  of  Magyar,  for  isn't  Pilsen  in 
Bohemia?  Moreover,  turn  to  the  chapter  on 
Prague  in  "New  Cosmopolis,"  and  you  will  find 
out  in  what  highland  his  heart  really  is.  In  this 
book,  indeed,  is  a  vast  hymn  to  all  things  Czechic — 
the  Pilsen  Urquell,  the  muffins  stuffed  with  poppy- 
seed  jam,  the  spiced  chicken  liver  en  casserole,  the 
pretty  Bohemian  girls,  the  rose  and  golden  glory  of 
Hradschin  Hill.  .  .  .  One  thinks  of  other  strange 
infatuations:  the  Polish  Conrad's  for  England,  the 
Scotch  Mackay's  for  Germany,  the  Low  German 
Brahms'  for  Italy.  Huneker,  I  daresay,  is  the  first 
Celto-Czech — or  Celto-Magyar,  as  you  choose. 
(Maybe  the  name  suggests  something.  It  is  not  to 
be  debased  to  Hoon-eker,  remember,  but  kept  at 
Hun-eker,  rhyming  initially  with  nun  and  gun.) 


166  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

An  unearthly  marriage  of  elements,  by  all  the  gods! 
but  there  are  pretty  children  of  it.  ... 

Philadelphia  humanely  disgorged  Huneker  in 
1878.  His  father  designed  him  for  the  law,  and 
he  studied  the  institutes  at  the  Philadelphia  Law 
Academy,  but  like  Schumann,  he  was  spoiled  for 
briefs  by  the  stronger  pull  of  music  and  the 
cacoethes  scribendi.  (Grandpa  John  Huneker  had 
been  a  composer  of  church  music,  and  organist  at 
St.  Mary's.)  In  the  year  mentioned  he  set  out 
for  Paris  to  see  Liszt;  his  aim  was  to  make  himself 
a  piano  virtuoso.  His  name  does  not  appear  on 
his  own  exhaustive  list  of  Liszt  pupils,  but  he  man 
aged  to  quaff  of  the  Pierian  spring  at  second-hand, 
for  he  had  lessons  from  Theodore  Ritter  (ne  Ben- 
net),  a  genuine  pupil  of  the  old  walrus,  and  he 
was  also  taught  by  the  venerable  Georges  Mathias, 
a  pupil  of  Chopin.  These  days  laid  the  founda 
tions  for  two  subsequent  books,  the  "Chopin:  the 
Man  and  His  Music"  of  1900,  and  the  "Franz 
Liszt"  of  1911.  More,  they  prepared  the  excava 
tions  for  all  of  the  others,  for  Huneker  began  send 
ing  home  letters  to  the  Philadelphia  Bulletin  on  the 
pictures  that  he  saw,  the  books  that  he  read  and  the 
music  that  he  heard  in  Paris,  and  out  of  them 
gradually  grew  a  body  of  doctrine  that  was  to  be 


JAMES  HUNEKER  167 

developed  into  full-length  criticism  on  his  return 
to  the  United  States.  He  stayed  in  Paris  until  the 
middle  80's,  and  then  settled  in  New  York. 

All  the  while  his  piano  studies  continued,  and 
in  New  York  he  became  a  pupil  of  Rafael  Joseffy. 
He  even  became  a  teacher  himself  and  was  for  ten 
years  on  the  staff  of  the  National  Conservatory, 
and  showed  himself  at  all  the  annual  meetings  of 
the  Music  Teachers'  Association.  But  bit  by  bit 
criticism  elbowed  out  music-making,  as  music-mak 
ing  had  elbowed  out  criticism  with  Schumann  and 
Berlioz.  In  1886  or  thereabout  he  joined  the 
Musical  Courier;  then  he  went,  in  succession,  to 
the  old  Recorder,  to  the  Morning  Advertiser,  to  the 
Sun,  to  the  Times,  and  finally  to  the  Philadel 
phia  Press  and  the  New  York  World.  Vari 
ous  weeklies  and  monthlies  have  also  enlisted 
him:  Mile.  New  York,  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  the 
Smart  Set,  the  North  American  Review  and  Scrib- 
ner's.  He  has  even  stooped  to  Puck,  vainly  trying 
to  make  an  American  Simplicissimus  of  that  dull 
offspring  of  synagogue  and  barbershop.  He  has 
been,  in  brief,  an  extremely  busy  and  not  too  fas 
tidious  journalist,  writing  first  about  one  of  the 
arts,  and  then  about  another,  and  then  about  all 
seven  together.  But  music  has  been  the  steadiest 


168  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

of  all  his  loves;  his  first  three  books  dealt  almost 
wholly  with  it;  of  his  complete  canon  more  than 
half  have  to  do  with  it. 

§4 

His  first  book,  "Mezzotints  in  Modern  Music," 
published  in  1899,  revealed  his  predilections 
clearly,  and  what  is  more,  his  critical  insight  and 
sagacity.  One  reads  it  today  without  the  slightest 
feeling  that  it  is  an  old  story ;  some  of  the  chapters, 
obviously  reworkings  of  articles  for  the  papers, 
must  go  back  to  the  middle  90's,  and  yet  the  judg 
ments  they  proclaim  scarcely  call  for  the  change 
of  a  word.  The  single  noticeable  weakness  is  a 
too  easy  acquiescence  in  the  empty  showiness  of 
Saint-Saens,  a  tendency  to  bow  to  the  celebrated 
French  parlour  magician  too  often.  Here,  I  dare 
say,  is  an  echo  of  old  Paris  days,  for  Camille  was 
a  hero  on  the  Seine  in  1880,  and  there  was  even 
talk  of  pitting  him  against  Wagner.  The  esti 
mates  of  other  men  are  judiciously  arrived  at  and 
persuasively  stated.  Tschaikowsky  is  correctly  put 
down  as  a  highly  talented  but  essentially  shallow 
fellow — a  blubberer  in  the  regalia  of  a  philosopher. 
Brahms,  then  still  under  attack  by  Henry  T.  Finck, 
of  the  Evening  Post  (the  press-agent  of  Massenet: 


JAMES  HVNEKER  169 

ye  gods,  what  Harvard  can  do,  even  to  a  Wiirtem- 
berger!)  is  subjected  to  a  long,  an  intelligent  and 
an  extremely  friendly  analysis;  no  better  has  got 
into  English  since,  despite  too  much  stress  on  the 
piano  music.  And  Richard  Strauss,  yet  a  nine 
days'  wonder,  is  described  clearly  and  accurately, 
and  his  true  stature  indicated.  The  rest  of  the  book 
is  less  noteworthy;  Huneker  says  the  proper  things 
about  Chopin,  Liszt  and  Wagner,  and  adds  a  chap 
ter  on  piano  methods,  the  plain  fruit  of  his  late 
pedagogy.  But  the  three  chapters  I  have  men 
tioned  are  enough;  they  fell,  in  their  time,  into  a 
desert  of  stupidity;  they  set  a  standard  in  musical 
criticism  in  America  that  only  Huneker  himself  has 
ever  exceeded. 

The  most  popular  of  his  music  books,  of  course, 
is  the  "Chopin"  (1900).  Next  to  "Iconoclasts," 
it  is  the  best  seller  of  them  all.  More,  it  has  been 
done  into  German,  French  and  Italian,  and  is 
chiefly  responsible  for  Huneker' s  celebrity  abroad 
as  the  only  critic  of  music  that  America  has  ever 
produced.  Superficially,  it  seems  to  be  a  monu 
ment  of  pedantry,  a  meticulous  piling  up  of  learn 
ing,  but  a  study  of  it  shows  that  it  is  very  much 
more  than  that.  Compare  it  to  Sir  George  Grove's 
staggering  tome  on  the  Beethoven  symphonies  if 
you  want  to  understand  the  difference  between  mere 


170  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

scholastic  diligence  and  authentic  criticism.  The 
one  is  simply  a  top-heavy  mass  of  disorderly  facts 
and  worshipping  enthusiasm;  the  other  is  an  an 
alysis  that  searches  out  every  nook  and  corner  of 
the  subject,  and  brings  it  into  coherence  and  in 
telligibility.  The  Chopin  rhapsodist  is  always 
held  in  check  by  the  sound  musician;  there  is  a 
snouting  into  dark  places  as  well  as  a  touching  up 
of  high  lights.  I  myself  am  surely  no  disciple  of 
the  Polish  tuberose — his  sweetness,  in  fact,  gags 
me,  and  I  turn  even  to  Moszkowski  for  relief — but 
I  have  read  and  re-read  this  volume  with  endless 
interest,  and  I  find  it  more  bethumbed  than  any 
other  Huneker  book  in  my  library,  saving  only 
"Iconoclasts"  and  "Old  Fogy."  Here,  indeed, 
Huneker  is  on  his  own  ground.  One  often  feels, 
in  his  discussions  of  orchestral  music,  that  he  only 
thinks  orchestrally,  like  Schumann,  with  an  effort 
— that  all  music,  in  his  mind,  gets  itself  translated 
into  terms  of  piano  music.  In  dealing  with  Chopin 
no  such  transvaluation  of  values  is  necessary;  the 
raw  materials  are  ready  for  his  uses  without  prep 
aration;  he  is  wholly  at  home  among  the  black 
keys  and  white. 

His  "Liszt"  is  a  far  less  noteworthy  book.  It 
is,  in  truth,  scarcely  a  book  at  all,  but  merely  a 
collection  of  notes  for  a  book,  some  of  them  con- 


JAMES  HUNEKER  171 

siderably  elaborated,  but  others  set  down  in  the 
altogether.  One  reads  it  because  it  is  about  Liszt, 
the  most  fantastic  figure  that  ever  came  out  of 
Hungary,  half  devil  and  half  clown;  not  because 
there  is  any  conflagration  of  ideas  in  it.  The  chap 
ter  that  reveals  most  of  Huneker  is  the  appendix 
on  latter-day  piano  virtuosi,  with  its  estimates  of 
such  men  as  de  Pachmann,  Rosenthal,  Paderewski 
and  Hofmann.  Much  better  stuff  is  to  be  found  in 
"Overtones,"  "The  Pathos  of  Distance"  and  "Ivory, 
Apes  and  Peacocks" — brilliant,  if  not  always  pro 
found  studies  of  Strauss,  Wagner,  Schoenberg, 
Moussorgsky,  and  even  Verdi.  But  if  I  had  my 
choice  of  the  whole  shelf,  it  would  rest,  barring  the 
"Chopin,"  on  "Old  Fogy"— the  scherzo  of  the 
Hunekeran  symphony,  the  critic  taking  a  holiday, 
the  Devil's  Mass  in  the  tonal  sanctuary.  In  it 
Huneker  is  at  his  very  choicest,  making  high- jinks 
with  his  Davidsbund  of  one,  rattling  the  skeletons 
in  all  the  musical  closets  of  the  world.  Here, 
throwing  off  his  critic's  black  gown,  his  lays  about 
him  right  and  left,  knocking  the  reigning  idols  off 
their  perches;  resurrecting  the  old,  old  dead  and 
trying  to  pump  the  breath  into  them;  lambasting 
on  one  page  and  lauding  on  the  next;  lampooning 
his  fellow  critics  and  burlesquing  their  rubber 
stamp  fustian;  extolling  Dussek  and  damning  Wag- 


172  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

ner;  swearing  mighty  oaths  by  Mozart,  and  after 
him,  Strauss — not  Richard,  but  Johann!  The  Old 
Fogy,  of  course,  is  the  thinnest  of  disguises,  a  mere 
veil  of  gossamer  for  "Editor"  Huneker.  That 
Huneker  in  false  whiskers  is  inimitable,  incom 
parable,  almost  indescribable.  On  the  one  hand,  he 
is  a  prodigy  of  learning,  a  veritable  warehouse  of 
musical  information,  true,  half-true  and  apocry 
phal;  on  the  other  hand,  he  is  a  jester  who  delights 
in  reducing  all  learning  to  absurdity.  Reading 
him  somehow  suggests  hearing  a  Bach  mass  re- 
scored  for  two  fifes,  a  tambourine  in  B,  a  wind 
machine,  two  tenor  harps,  a  contrabass  oboe,  two 
banjos,  eight  tubas  and  the  usual  clergy  and 
strings.  The  substance  is  there;  every  note  is 
struck  exactly  in  the  middle — but  what  outlandish 
tone  colours,  what  strange,  unearthly  sounds!  It 
is  not  Bach,  however,  who  first  comes  to  mind  when 
Huneker  is  at  his  tricks,  but  Papa  Haydn — the 
Haydn  of  the  Surprise  symphony  and  the  Farewell. 
There  is  the  same  gargantuan  gaiety,  the  same  mag 
nificent  irreverence.  Haydn  did  more  for  the 
symphony  than  any  other  man,  but  he  also  got 
more  fun  out*  of  it  than  any  other  man. 

"Old  Fogy,"  of  course,  is  not  to  be  taken  se 
riously:  it  is  frankly  a  piece  of  fooling.  But  all 
the  same  a  serious  idea  runs  through  the  book  from 


JAMES  HUNEKER  173 

end  to  end,  and  that  is  the  idea  that  music  is  get 
ting  too  subjective  to  be  comfortable.  The  makers 
of  symphonies  tend  to  forget  beauty  altogether; 
their  one  effort  is  to  put  all  their  own  petty  trials 
and  tribulations,  their  empty  theories  and  specula 
tions  into  cacophony.  Even  so  far  back  as 
Beethoven's  day  that  autobiographical  habit  had  be 
gun.  "Beethoven,"  says  Old  Fogy,  is  "dramatic, 
powerful,  a  maker  of  storms,  a  subduer  of  tem 
pests;  but  his  speech  is  the  speech  of  a  self-cen 
tred  egotist.  He  is  the  father  of  all  the  modern 
melomaniacs,  who,  looking  into  their  own  souls, 
write  what  they  see  therein — misery,  corruption, 
slighting  selfishness  and  ugliness."  Old  Ludwig's 
groans,  of  course,  we  can  stand.  He  was  not  only 
a  great  musician,  but  also  a  great  man.  It  is  just 
as  interesting  to  hear  him  sigh  and  complain  as  it 
would  be  to  hear  the  private  prayers  of  Julius 
Caesar.  But  what  of  Tschaikowsky,  with  his  child 
ish  Slavic  whining?  What  of  Liszt,  with  his  cheap 
playacting,  his  incurable  lasciviousness,  his  ple 
beian  warts?  What  of  Wagner,  with  his  delight  in 
imbecile  fables,  his  popinjay  vanity,  his  soul  of 
a  Schnorrer?  What  of  Richard  Strauss,  with  his 
warmed-over  Nietzscheism,  his  flair  for  the  merely 
horrible?  Old  Fogy  sweeps  them  all  into  his  rag 
bag.  If  art  is  to  be  defined  as  beauty  seen  through 


174  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

a  temperament,  then  give  us  more  beauty  and 
cleaner  temperaments!  Back  to  the  old  gods, 
Mozart  and  Bach,  with  a  polite  bow  to  Brahms  and 
a  sentimental  tear  for  Chopin!  Beethoven  tried 
to  tell  his  troubles  in  his  music;  Mozart  was  content 
to  ravish  the  angels  of  their  harps.  And  as  for 
Johann  Sebastian,  "there  was  more  real  musical 
feeling,  uplifting  and  sincerity  in  the  old  Thomas- 
kirche  in  Leipzig  .  .  .  than  in  all  your  modern 
symphony  and  oratorio  machine-made  concerts  put 
together." 

All  this  is  argued,  to  be  sure,  in  extravagant 
terms.  Wagner  is  a  mere  ghoul  and  impostor: 
"The  Flying  Dutchman"  is  no  more  than  a  parody 
on  Weber,  and  "Parsifal"  is  "an  outrage  against 
religion,  morals  and  music."  Daddy  Liszt  is  "the 
inventor  of  the  Liszt  pupil,  a  bad  piano  player,  a 
venerable  man  with  a  purple  nose — a  Cyrano  de 
Cognac  nose."  Tschaikowsky  is  the  Slav  gone 
crazy  on  vodka.  He  transformed  Hamlet  into  "a 
yelling  man"  and  Romeo  and  Juliet  into  "two 
monstrous  Cossacks,  who  gibber  and  squeak  at  each 
other  while  reading  some  obscene  volume."  "His 
Manfred  is  a  libel  on  Byron,  who  was  a  libel  on 
God."  And  even  Schumann  is  a  vanishing  star,  a 
literary  man  turned  composer,  a  pathological  case. 
But,  as  I  have  said,  a  serious  idea  runs  through  all 


JAMES  HUNEKER  175 

this  concerto  for  slapstick  and  seltzer  siphon,  and 
to  me,  at  least,  that  idea  has  a  plentiful  reasonable 
ness.  We  are  getting  too  much  melodrama,  too 
much  vivisection,  too  much  rebellion — and  too  lit 
tle  music.  Turn  from  Tschaikowsky's  Pathetique 
or  from  any  of  his  wailing  tone-poems  to  Schu 
bert's  C  major,  or  to  Mozart's  Jupiter,  or  to 
Beethoven's  kleine  Sinfonie  in  F  dur:  it  is  like  com 
ing  out  of  a  Kaffeeklatsch  into  the  open  air,  almost 
like  escaping  from  a  lunatic  asylum.  The  one 
unmistakable  emotion  that  much  of  this  modern 
music  from  the  steppes  and  morgues  and  Biertische 
engenders  is  a  longing  for  form,  clarity,  coherence, 
a  self-respecting  tune.  The  snorts  and  moans  of 
the  pothouse  Werthers  are  as  irritating,  in  the  long 
run,  as  the  bawling  of  a  child,  the  squeak  of  a  pig 
under  a  gate.  One  yearns  unspeakably  for  a  com 
poser  who  gives  out  his  pair  of  honest  themes,  and 
then  develops  them  with  both  ears  open,  and  then 
recapitulates  them  unashamed,  and  then  hangs  a 
brisk  coda  to  them,  and  then  shuts  up. 

§5 

So  much  for  "Old  Fogy"  and  the  musical  books. 
They  constitute,  not  only  the  best  body  of  work  that 
Huneker  himself  has  done,  but  the  best  body  of 


176  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

musical  criticism  that  any  American  has  done. 
Musical  criticism,  in  our  great  Calvinist  republic, 
confines  itself  almost  entirely  to  transient  review 
ing,  and  even  when  it  gets  between  covers,  it  keeps 
its  trivial  quality.  Consider,  for  example,  the  pub 
lished  work  of  Henry  Edward  Krehbiel,  for  long 
the  doyen  of  the  New  York  critics.  I  pick  up  his 
latest  book,  "A  Second  Book  of  Operas,"  1  open  it 
at  random,  and  find  this: 

On  January  31,  1893,  the  Philadelphia  singers,  aided  by  the 
New  York  Symphony  Society,  gave  a  performance  of  the 
opera,  under  the  auspices  of  the  Young  Men's  Hebrew  Asso 
ciation,  for  the  benefit  of  its  charities,  at  the  Carnegie  Music 
Hall,  New  York.  Mr.  Walter  Damrosch  was  to  have  con 
ducted,  but  was  detained  in  Washington  by  the  funeral  of  Mr. 
Elaine,  and  Mr.  Hinrichs  took  his  place. 

0  Doctor  admirabilis,  acutus  et  illuminatissi' 
mus!     Needless  to  say  the  universities  have  not 
overlooked  this   geyser  of  buttermilk:   he  is  an 
honourary  A.M.  of  Yale.     His  most  respectable 
volume,  that  on  negro  folksong,  impresses.one  prin 
cipally  by  its  incompleteness.     It  may  be  praised 
as  a  sketch,  but  surely  not  as  a  book.     The  trouble 
with  Krehbiel,   of  course,  is  that  he  mistakes  a 
newspaper  morgue  for  Parnassus.     He  has  all  of 
the  third-rate   German's  capacity   for  unearthing 

1  New  York,  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1917. 


JAMES  HUNEKER  177 

facts,  but  he  doesn't  know  how  either  to  think  or  to 
write,  and  so  his  criticism  is  mere  pretence  and 
pishposh.  W.  J.  Henderson,  of  the  Sun,  doesn't 
carry  that  handicap.  He  is  as  full  of  learning  as 
Krehbiel,  as  his  books  on  singing  and  on  the  early 
Italian  opera  show,  but  he  also  wields  a  slippery 
and  intriguing  pen,  and  he  could  be  hugely  enter 
taining  if  he  would.  Instead,  he  devotes  himself 
to  manufacturing  primers  for  the  newly  intel 
lectual.  I  can  find  little  of  the  charm  of  his  Sun 
articles  in  his  books.  Lawrence  Gilman?  A 
sound  musician  but  one  who  of  late  years  has 
often  neglected  music  for  the  other  arts.  Philip 
H.  Goepp?  His  three  volumes  on  the  symphonic 
repertoire  leave  twice  as  much  to  be  said  as  they 
say.  Carl  Van  Vechten?  A  very  promising  nov 
ice,  but  not  yet  at  full  growth.  Philip  Hale? 
His  gigantic  annotations  scarcely  belong  to  criti 
cism  at  all;  they  are  musical  talmudism.  Beside, 
they  are  buried  in  the  program  books  of  the  Bos 
ton  Symphony  Orchestra,  and  might  as  well  be  in 
scribed  on  the  temple  walls  of  Baalbec.  As  for 
Upton  and  other  such  fellows,  they  are  merely 
musical  chautauquans,  and  their  tedious  commen 
taries  have  little  more  value  than  the  literary 
criticisms  in  the  religious  weeklies.  One  of  them, 
a  Harvard  maestro,  has  published  a  book  on  the 


178  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

orchestra  in  which,  on  separate  pages,  the  reader  is 
solemnly  presented  with  pictures  of  first  and  second 
violins! 

It  seems  to  me  that  Huneker  stands  on  a  higher 
level  than  any  of  these  industrious  gentlemen,  and 
that  his  writings  on  music  are  of  much  more  value, 
despite  his  divided  allegiance  among  the  beaux 
arts.  Whatever  may  be  said  against  him,  it  must 
at  least  be  admitted  that  he  knows  Chopin,  and  that 
he  has  written  the  best  volumes  upon  the  tuber 
culous  Pole  in  English.  Vladimir  de  Pachmann, 
that  king  of  all  Chopin  players,  once  bore  charac 
teristic  testimony  to  the  fact — I  think  it  was  in 
London.  The  program  was  heavy  with  the  etudes 
and  ballades,  and  Huneker  sat  in  the  front  row  of 
fanatics.  After  a  storm  of  applause  de  Pachmann 
rose  from  the  piano  stool,  levelled  a  bony  claw  at 
Huneker,  and  pronounced  his  dictum:  "He  knows 
more  than  all  of  you."  Joseffy  seems  to  have  had 
the  same  opinion,  for  he  sought  the  aid  of  his  old 
pupil  in  preparing  his  new  edition  of  Chopin,  the 
first  volume  of  which  is  all  he  lived  to  see  in  print. 
.  .  .  And,  beyond  all  the  others,  Huneker  disdains 
writing  for  the  kindergarten.  There  is  no  stoop 
ing  in  his  discourse;  he  frankly  addresses  him 
self  to  an  audience  that  has  gone  through  the  forms, 
and  so  he  avoids  the  tediousness  of  the  A  B  C  ex- 


JAMES  HUNEKER  179 

positors.  He  is  the  only  American  musical  critic, 
save  Van  Vechten,  who  thus  assumes  invariably  that 
a  musical  audience  exists,  and  the  only  one  who 
constantly  measures  up  to  its  probable  interests, 
supposing  it  to  be  there.  Such  a  book  as  "Old 
Fogy,"  for  all  its  buffoonery,  is  conceivable  only 
as  the  work  of  a  sound  musician.  Its  background 
is  one  of  the  utmost  sophistication;  in  the  midst  of 
its  wildest  extravagances  there  is  always  a  pro 
found  knowledge  of  music  on  tap,  and  a  profound 
love  of  it  to  boot.  Here,  perhaps,  more  than  any 
where  else,  Huneker's  delight  in  the  things  he  deals 
with  is  obvious.  It  is  not  a  seminary  that  he 
keeps,  but  a  sort  of  club  of  tone  enthusiasts,  and 
membership  in  it  is  infinitely  charming. 

56 

This  capacity  for  making  the  thing  described 
seem  important  and  delightful,  this  quality  of  in 
fectious  gusto,  this  father-talent  of  all  the  talents 
that  a  critic  needs,  sets  off  his  literary  criticism  no 
less  than  his  discourse  on  music  and  musicians. 
Such  a  book  as  "Iconoclasts"  or  "Egoists"  is  full 
of  useful  information,  but  it  is  even  more  full  of 
agreeable  adventure.  The  style  is  the  book,  as  it 
is  the  man.  It  is  arch,  staccato,  ironical,  witty. 


180  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

galloping,  playful,  polyglot,  allusive-^soj^ejtimes, 
"alaspso^IIiisive  as  to  reduceThe  iJrama  Leaguer 
and  women's  clubber  to  wonderment  and  ire.  In 
writing  of  plays  or  of  books,  as  in  writing  of  cities, 
tone-poems  or  philosophies,  Huneker  always  as 
sumes  that  the  elements  are  already  well-grounded, 
that  he  is  dealing  with  the  initiated,  that  a  pause 
to  explain  would  be  an  affront.  Sad  work  for  the 
Philistines — but  a  joy  to  the  elect!  All  this  poly 
phonic  allusiveness,  this  intricate  fuguing  of  ideas, 
is  not  to  be  confused,  remember,  with  the  hollow 
showiness  of  the  academic  soothsayer.  It  is  as 
natural  to  the  man,  as  much  a  part  of  him  as  the 
clanging  Latin  of  Johnson,  or,  to  leap  from  art  to 
art  Huneker-wise,  the  damnable  cross-rhythms  of 
Brahms.  He  could  no  more  write  without  his  stock 
company  of  heretic  sages  than  he  could  write  with 
out  his  ration  of  malt.  And,  on  examination,  all 
of  them  turned  out  to  be  real.  They  are  far  up 
dark  alleys,  but  they  are  there!  .  .  .  And  one  finds 
them,  at  last,  to  be  as  pleasant  company  as  the 
multilingual  puns  of  Nietzsche  or  Debussy's  chords 
of  the  second. 

As  for  the  origin  of  that  style,  it  seems  to  have 
a  complex  ancestry.  Huneker's  first  love  was  Poe, 
and  even  today  he  still  casts  affectionate  glances  in 
that  direction,  but  there  is  surely  nothing  of  Poe's 


JAMES  HUNEKER  181 

elephantine  labouring  in  his  skipping,  pizzicato 
sentences.  Then  came  Carlyle — the  Carlyle  of 
"Sartor  Resartus" — a  god  long  forgotten.  Hune- 
ker's  mother  was  a  woman  of  taste;  on  reading  his 
first  scribblings,  she  gave  him  Cardinal  Newman, 
and  bade  him  consider  the  Queen's  English.  New 
man  achieved  a  useful  purging;  the  style  that  re 
mained  was  ready  for  Flaubert.  From  the  author 
of  "L'Education  Sentimentale,"  I  daresay,  came 
the  deciding  influence,  with  Nietzsche's  staggering 
brilliance  offering  suggestions  later  on.  Thus 
Huneker,  as  stylist,  owes  nearly  all  to  France,  for 
Nietzsche,  too,  learned  how  to  write  there,  and  to 
the  end  of  his  days  he  always  wrote  more  like  a 
Frenchman  than  a  German.  His  greatest  service 
to  his  own  country,  indeed,  was  not  as  anarch,  but 
as  teacher  of  writing.  He  taught  the  Germans  that 
their  language  had  a  snap  in  it  as  well  as  sighs  and 
gargles — that  it  was  possible  to  write  German  and 
yet  not  wander  in  a  wood.  There  are  whole  pages 
of  Nietzsche  that  suggest  such  things,  say,  as  the 
essay  on  Maurice  Barres  in  "Egoists,"  with  its  bold 
tropes,  its  rapid  gait,  its  sharp  sforzandos.  And 
you  will  find  old  Friedrich  at  his  tricks  from  end  to 
end  of  "Old  Fogy." 

Of  the  actual  contents  of  such  books  as  "Egoists" 
and  "Iconoclasts"  it  is  unnecessary  to  say  any- 


182  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

thing.  One  no  longer  reads  them  for  their  matter, 
but  for  their  manner.  Every  flapper  now  knows 
all  that  is  worth  knowing  about  Ibsen,  Strindberg, 
Maeterlinck  and  Shaw,  and  a  great  deal  that  is  not 
worth  knowing.  We  have  disentangled  Haupt- 
mann  from  Sudermann,  and,  thanks  to  Dr.  Lew- 
isohn,  may  read  all  his  plays  in  English.  Even 
Henry  Becque  has  got  into  the  vulgate  and  is 
familiar  to  the  Drama  League.  As  for  Anatole 
France,  his  "Revolt  of  the  Angels"  is  on  the  shelves 
of  the  Carnegie  Libraries,  and  the  Comstocks  have 
let  it  pass.  New  gods  whoop  and  rage  in  Valhalla: 
Verhaeren,  Artzibashef,  Przybyszewski.  Huneker, 
alas,  seems  to  drop  behind  the  procession.  He 
writes  nothing  about  these  second-hand  third-raters. 
He  has  come  to  Wedekind,  Schnitzler,  Schoenberg, 
Korngold  and  Moussorgsky,  and  he  has  discharged 
a  few  rounds  of  shrapnel  at  the  Gallo- Asiatic  petti 
coat  philosopher,  Henri  Bergson,  but  here  he  has 
stopped,  as  he  has  stopped  at  Matisse,  Picasso,  Ep 
stein  and  Augustus  John  in  painting.  As  he  says 
himself,  "one  must  get  off  somewhere."  .  .  . 

Particularly  if  one  grows  weary  of  criticism — 
and  in  Huneker,  of  late,  I  detect  more  than  one 
sign  of  weariness.  Youth  is  behind  him,  and  with 
it  some  of  its  zest  for  exploration  and  combat. 
"The  pathos  of  distance"  is  a  phrase  that  haunts 


JAMES  HUNEKER  183 

him  as  poignantly  as  it  haunted  Nietzsche,  its 
maker.  Not  so  long  ago  I  tried  to  induce  him  to 
write  some  new  Old  Fogy  sketches,  nominating 
Puccini,  Strawinsky,  Schoenberg,  Korngold,  Elgar. 
He  protested  that  the  mood  was  gone  from  him 
forever,  that  he  could  not  turn  the  clock  back 
twenty  years.  His  late  work  in  Puck,  the  Times 
and  the  Sun,  shows  an  unaccustomed  acquiescence 
in  current  valuations.  He  praises  such  one-day 
masterpieces  as  McFee's  "Casuals  of  the  Sea";  he 
is  polite  to  the  gaudy  heroines  of  the  opera-house; 
he  gags  a  bit  at  Wright's  "Modern  Painting";  he 
actually  makes  a  gingery  curtsy  to  Frank  Jewett 
Mather,  a  Princeton  professor.  .  .  .  The  pressure 
in  the  gauges  can't  keep  up  to  250  pounds  forever. 
Man  must  tire  of  fighting  after  awhile,  and  seek 
his  ease  in  his  inn.  .  .  . 

Perhaps  the  post-bellum  transvaluation  of  all 
values  will  bring  Huneker  to  his  feet  again,  and 
with  something  of  the  old  glow  and  gusto  in  him. 
And  if  the  new  men  do  not  stir  up,  then  assuredly 
the  wrecks  of  the  ancient  cities  will:  the  Paris  of 
his  youth;  Munich,  Dresden,  Vienna,  Brussels, 
London;  above  all,  Prague.  Go  to  "New  Cos- 
mopolis"  and  you  will  find  where  his  heart  lies,  or, 
if  not  his  heart,  then  at  all  events  his  oesophagus 
and  pylorus.  .  .  .  Here,  indeed,  the  thread  of  his 


184  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

meditations  is  a  thread  of  nutriment.  However 
diverted  by  the  fragrance  of  the  Dutch  woods,  the 
church  bells  of  Belgium,  the  music  of  Stuttgart,  the 
bad  pictures  of  Dublin,  the  plays  of  Paris,  the 
musty  romance  of  old  Wien,  he  always  comes  back 
anon  to  such  ease  as  a  man  may  find  in  his  inn. 
"The  stomach  of  Vienna,"  he  says,  "first  interested 
me,  not  its  soul."  And  so,  after  a  dutiful  genu 
flexion  to  St.  Stephen's  ("Old  Steffel,"  as  the  Vien 
nese  call  it),  he  proceeds  to  investigate  the  paprika- 
chicken,  the  Gulyas,  the  Risi-bisi,  the  Apfelstrudel, 
the  Kaiser schmarrn  and  the  native  and  authentic 
Wiener  schnitzel.  And  from  food  to  drink — spe 
cifically,  to  the  haunts  of  Pilsner,  to  "certain  semi- 
sacred  houses  where  the  ritual  of  beer-drinking  is 
observed,"  to  the  shrines  at  which  beer  maniacs 
meet,  to  "a  little  old  house  near  a  Greek  church" 
where  "the  best-kept  Pilsner  in  Vienna  may  be 
found." 

The  best-kept  Pilsner  in  Vienna!  The  phrase 
enchants  like  an  entrance  of  the  horns.  The  best 
caviare  in  Russia,  the  worst  actor  on  Broadway,  the 
most  virtuous  angel  in  Heaven!  Such  superlatives 
are  transcendental.  And  yet, — so  rare  is  perfec 
tion  in  this  world! — the  news  swiftly  follows,  un 
expected,  disconcerting,  that  the  best  Pilsner  in 
Vienna  is  far  short  of  the  ideal.  For  some  unde- 


JAMES  HUNEKER  185 

termined  reason — the  influence  of  the  American 
tourist?  the  decay  of  the  Austrian  national  charac 
ter? — the  Vienna  Bierwirte  freeze  and  paralyze  it 
with  too  much  ice,  so  that  it  chills  the  nerves  it 
should  caress,  and  fills  the  heart  below  with  heavi 
ness  and  repining.  Avoid  Vienna,  says  Huneker, 
if  you  are  one  who  understands  and  venerates  the 
great  Bohemian  brew!  And  if,  deluded,  you  find 
yourself  there,  take  the  first  D-zug  for  Prague,  that 
lovely  city,  for  in  it  you  will  find  the  Pilsen  £/r« 
quell,  and  in  the  Pilsen  Urquell  you  will  find  the 
best  Pilsner  in  Christendom — its  colour  a  phos 
phorescent,  translucent,  golden  yellow,  its  foam 
like  whipped  cream,  its  temperature  exactly  and  in 
variably  right.  Not  even  at  Pilsen  itself  (which 
the  Bohemians  call  Plezen)  is  the  emperor  of  malt 
liquors  more  stupendously  grateful  to  the  palate. 
Write  it  down  before  you  forget:  the  Pilsen  Ur 
quell,  Prague,  Bohemia,  120  miles  S.  S.  E.  of 
Dresden,  on  the  river  Moldau  (which  the  natives 
call  the  Vitava) .  Ask  for  Fraulein  Ottilie.  Men 
tion  the  name  of  Herr  Huneker,  the  American 
Schriftsteller. 

Of  all  the  eminent  and  noble  cities  between  the 
Alleghenies  and  the  Balkans,  Prague  seems  to  be 
/    Huneker's  favourite.     He  calls^it  poetic,  precious, 
original,   draiaalLczira  lon     st|jii£  of 


186  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

adjectives,  each  argued  for  with  eloquence  that  is 
unmistakably  sincere.  He  stands  fascinated  be 
fore  the  towers  and  pinnacles  of  the  Hradschin, 
"a  miracle  of  tender  rose  and  marble  white  with 
golden  spots  of  sunshine  that  would  have  made 
Claude  Monet  envious."  He  pays  his  devotions  to 
the  Chapel  of  St.  Wenceslaus,  "crammed  with  the 
bones  of  buried  kings,"  or,  at  any  rate,  to  the  shrine 
of  St.  John  Nepomucane,  "composed  of  nearly  two 
tons  of  silver."  He  is  charmed  by  the  beauty  of 
the  stout,  black-haired,  red-cheeked  Bohemian  girls, 
and  hopes  that  enough  of  them  will  emigrate  to  the 
United  States  to  improve  the  fading  pulchritude  of 
our  own  houris.  But  most  of  all,  he  has  praises  for 
the  Bohemian  cuisine,  with  its  incomparable  apple 
tarts,  and  its  dumplings  of  cream  cheese,  and  for 
the  magnificent,  the  overpowering,  the  ineffable 
Pilsner  of  Prague.  This  Pilsner  motive  runs 
through  the  book  from  cover  to  cover.  In  the 
midst  of  Dutch  tulip-beds,  Dublin  cobblestones, 
Madrid  sunlight  and  Atlantic  City  leg-shows,  one 
hears  it  insistently,  deep  down  in  the  orchestra. 
The  cellos  weave  it  into  the  polyphony,  sometimes 
clearly,  sometimes  in  scarcely  recognizable  aug 
mentation.  It  is  heard  again  in  the  wood-wind; 
the  bassoons  grunt  it  thirstily;  it  slides  around  in 
the  violas;  it  rises  to  a  stately  choral  in  the  brass. 


JAMES  HUNEKER  187 

And  chiefly  it  is  in  minor.  Chiefly  it  is  sounded 
by  one  who  longs  for  the  Pilsen  Urquell  in  a  far 
land,  and  among  a  barbarous  and  teetotaling  peo 
ple,  and  in  an  atmosphere  as  hostile  to  the  recrea 
tions  of  the  palate  as  it  is  to  the  recreations  of  the 
intellect. 

As  I  say,  this  Huneker  is  a  foreigner  and  hence 
accursed.  There  is  something  about  him  as  exotic 
as  a  samovar,  as  essentially  un-American  as  a 
bashi-bazouk,  a  nose-ring  or  a  fugue.  He  is  filled 
to  the  throttle  with  strange  and  unnational  heresies. 
He  ranks  Beethoven  miles  above  the  native  gods, 
and  not  only  Beethoven,  but  also  Bach  and  Brahms, 
and  not  only  Bach  and  Brahms,  but  also  Berlioz, 
Bizet,  Bruch  and  Bulow  and  perhaps  even  Bala- 
kirew,  Bellini,  Balfe,  Borodin  and  Boieldieu.  He 
regards  Budapest  as  a  more  civilized  city  than 
his  native  Philadelphia,  Stendhal  as  a  greater  lit 
erary  artist  than  Washington  Irving,  "Kiinstler 
Leben"  as  better  music  than  "There  is  Sunlight  in 
My  Soul."  Irish?  I  still  doubt  it,  despite  the 
Stammbaum.  Who  ever  heard  of  an  Irish  epicure, 
an  Irish  flaneur,  or,  for  that  matter,  an  Irish  con 
trapuntist?  The  arts  of  the  voluptuous  category 
are  unknown  west  of  Cherbourg;  one  leaves  them 
behind  with  the  French  pilot.  Even  the  Czech- 
Irish  hypothesis  (or  is  it  Magyar-Irish?)  has  a 


188  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

smell  of  the  lamp.     Perhaps  it  should  be  Irish- 
Czech.  .  .  . 

§7 

There  remain  the  books  of  stories,  "Visionaries" 
and  "Melomaniacs."  It  is  not  surprising  to  hear 
that  both  are  better  liked  in  France  and  Germany 
than  in  England  and  the  United  States.  ("Vision 
aries"  has  even  appeared  in  Bohemian.)  Both  are 
made  up  of  what  the  Germans  call  Kultur-N ovellen 
— that  is,  stories  dealing,  not  with  the  emotions 
common  to  all  men,  but  with  the  clash  of  ideas 
among  the  civilized  and  godless  minority.  In 
some  of  them,  e.g.,  "Rebels  of  the  Moon,"  what 
one  finds  is  really  not  a  story  at  all,  but  a  static  dis 
cussion,  half  aesthetic  and  half  lunatic.  In  others, 
e.g.,  "Isolde's  Mother,"  the  whole  action  revolves 
around  an  assumption  incomprehensible  to  the  gen 
eral.  One  can  scarcely  imagine  most  of  these  tales 
in  the  magazines.  They  would  puzzle  and  out 
rage  -the  readers  of  Gouverneur  Morris  and  Ger 
trude  Atherton,  and  the  readers  of  Howells  and 
Mrs.  Wharton  no  less.  Their  point  of  view  is  es 
sentially  the  aesthetic  one;  the  overwhelming  im 
portance  of  beauty  is  never  in  any  doubt.  And  the 
beauty  thus  vivisected  and  fashioned  into  new  de 
signs  is  never  the  simple  Wordsworthian  article, 


JAMES  HUNEKER  189 

of  fleecy  clouds  and  primroses  all  compact;  on  the 
contrary,  it  is  the  highly  artificial  beauty  of  pig 
ments  and  tone-colours,  of  Cezanne  landscapes  and 
the  second  act  of  "Tristan  und  Isolde,"  of  Dun- 
sanyan  dragons  and  Paracelsian  mysteries.  Here, 
indeed,  Huneker  riots  in  the  aesthetic  occultism  that 
he  loves.  Music  slides  over  into  diabolism;  the 
Pobloff  symphony  rends  the  firmament  of  Heaven; 
the  ghost  of  Chopin  drives  Mychowski  to  drink;  a 
single  drum-beat  finishes  the  estimable  consort  of 
the  composer  of  the  Tympani  symphony.  In  "The 
Eighth  Deadly  Sin"  we  have  a  paean  to  perfume — 
the  only  one,  so  far  as  I  know,  in  English.  In 
"The  Hall  of  the  Missing  Footsteps"  we  behold 
the  reaction  of  hasheesh  upon  Chopin's  ballade  in  F 
major.  .  .  .  Strangely -flavoured,  unearthly,  per 
haps  unhealthy  stuff.  I  doubt  that  it  will  ever  be 
studied  for  its  style  in  our  new  Schools  of  Liter 
ature;  a  devilish  cunning  if  often  there,  but  it 
leaves  a  smack  of  the  pharmacopoeia.  However, 
as  George  Gissing  used  to  say,  "the  artist  should 
be  free  from  everything  like  moral  prepossession." 
This  lets  in  the  Antichrist.  .  .  . 

Huneker  himself  seems  to  esteem  these  fantastic 
tales  above  all  his  other  work.  Story-writing,  in 
deed,  was  his  first  love,  and  his  Opus  1,  a  bad  imi 
tation  of  Poe,  by  name  "The  Comet,"  was  done  in 


190  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

Philadelphia  so  long  ago  as  July  4,  1876.  (Tem 
perature,  105  degrees  Fahrenheit.)  One  rather 
marvels  that  he  has  never  attempted  a  novel.  It 
would  have  been  as  bad,  perhaps,  as  "Love  Among 
the  Artists,"  but  certainly  no  bore.  He  might  have 
given  George  Moore  useful  help  with  "Evelyn 
Innes"  and  "Sister  Teresa":  they  are  about  music, 
but  not  by  a  musician.  As  for  me,  I  see  no  great 
talent  for  fiction  qua  fiction  in  these  two  volumes 
of  exotic  tales.  They  are  interesting  simply  be 
cause  Huneker  the  story  teller  so  often  yields  place 
to  Huneker  the  playboy  of  the  arts.  Such  things  as 
"Antichrist"  and  "The  Woman  Who  Loved 
Chopin"  are  no  more,  at  bottom,  than  second-rate 
anecdotes;  it  is  the  filling,  the  sauce,  the  embroid 
ery  that  counts.  But  what  filling!  What  sauce! 
What  embroidery!  .  .  .  One  never  sees  more  of 
Huneker.  .  .  . 

§8 

He  must  stand  or  fall,  however,  as  critic.  It  is 
what  he  has  written  about  other  men,  not  what  he 
has  concocted  himself,  that  makes  a  figure  of  him, 
and  gives  him  his  unique  place  in  the  sterile  liter 
ature  of  the  republic's  second  century.  He  stands 
for  a  Weltanschauung  that  is  not  only  un-national, 
but  anti-national;  he  is  the  chief  of  all  the  curbers 


JAMES  HUNEKER  191 

and  correctors  of  the  American  Philistine;  in 
praising  the  arts  he  has  also  criticized  a  civilization. 
In  the  large  sense,  of  course,  he  has  had  but  small 
influence.  After  twenty  years  of  earnest  labour, 
he  finds  himself  almost  as  alone  as  a  Methodist  in 
Bavaria.  The  body  of  native  criticism  remains  as 
I  have  described  it;  an  endless  piling  up  of  plati 
tudes,  an  homeric  mass  of  false  assumptions  and 
jejune  conclusions,  an  insane  madness  to  reduce 
beauty  to  terms  of  a  petty  and  pornographic  mor-  \ 
ality.  One  might  throw  a  thousand  bricks  in  any 
American  city  without  striking  a  single  man  who 
could  give  an  intelligible  account  of  either  Haupt- 
mann  or  Cezanne,  or  of  the  reasons  for  holding 
Schumann  to  have  been  a  better  composer  than 
Mendelssohn.  The  boys  in  our  colleges  are  still 
taught  that  Whittier  was  a  great  poet  and  Fenni- 
/more  Cooper  a  great  novelist.  Nine-tenths  of  our 
I  people — perhaps  ninety-nine  hundredths  of  our 
1  native-born — have  yet  to  see  their  first  good  pic- 
^ture,  or  to  hear  their  first  symphony.  Our  Cham- 
berses  and  Richard  Harding  Davises  are  national 
figures;  our  Norrises  and  Dreisers  are  scarcely  tol 
erated.  Of  the  two  undoubted  world  figures  that 
we  have  contributed  to  letters,  one  was  allowed  to 
die  like  a  stray  cat  up  an  alley  and  the  other  was 
mistaken  for  a  cheap  buffoon.  Criticism,  as  the 


192  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

average  American  "intellectual"  understands  it,  is 
what  a  Frenchman,  a  German  or  a  Russian  would 
call  donkeyism.     In  all  the  arts  we  still  cling  to  \ 
the  ideals  of  the  dissenting  pulpit,  the  public  ceme-  J 
tery,  the  electric  sign,  the  bordello  parlour. 

But  for  all  that,  I  hang  to  a  somewhat  battered 
optimism,  and  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  that  op 
timism  is  the  fact  that  Huneker,  after  all  these 
years,  yet  remains  unhanged.  A  picturesque  and 
rakish  fellow,  a  believer  in  joy  and  beauty,  a  dis- 
dainer  of  petty  bombast  and  moralizing,  a  sworn 
friend  of  all  honest  purpose  and  earnest  striving, 
he  has  given  his  life  to  a  work  that  must  needs  bear 
fruit  hereafter.  While  the  college  pedagogues  of 
the  Brander  Matthews  type  still  worshipped  the 
dead  bones  of  Scribe  and  Sardou,  Robertson  and 
Bulwer-Lytton,  he  preached  the  new  and  revolu 
tionary  gospel  of  Ibsen.  In  the  golden  age  of  Rosa 
Bonheur's  "The  Horse  Fair,"  he  was  expounding 
the  principles  of  the  post-impressionists.  In  the 
midst  of  the  Sousa  marches  he  whooped  for  Rich 
ard  Strauss.  Before  the  rev.  professors  had  come 
to  Schopenhauer,  or  even  to  Spencer,  he  was  haul 
ing  ashore  the  devil-fish,  Nietzsche.  No  stranger 
poisons  have  ever  passed  through  the  customs  than 
those  he  has  brought  in  his  baggage.  No  man 
among  us  has  ever  urged  more  ardently,  or  with 


JAMES  HUNEKER  193 

sounder  knowledge  or  greater  persuasiveness,  that 
catholicity  of  taste  and  sympathy  which  stands  in 
such  direct  opposition  to  the  booming  certainty 
and  snarling  narrowness  of  Little  Bethel. 

If  he  bears  a  simple  label,  indeed,  it  is  that  of 
anti-Philistine.  And  the  Philistine  he  attacks  is 
not  so  much  the  vacant  and  harmless  fellow  who 
belongs  to  the  Odd  Fellows  and  recreates  himself 
with  Life  and  Leslie's  Weekly  in  the  barber  shop,  as 
that  more  belligerent  and  pretentious  donkey  who 
presumes  to  do  battle  for  "honest"  thought  and  a 
"sound"  ethic — the  "forward  looking"  man,  the 
university  ignoramus,  the  conservator  of  orthodoxy, 
the  rattler  of  ancient  phrases — what  Nietzsche 
called  "the  Philistine  of  culture."  It  is  against 
this  fat  milch  cow  of  wisdom  that  Huneker  has 
brandished  a  spear  since  first  there  was  a  Huneker. 
He  is  a  sworn  foe  to  "the  traps  that  snare  the  atten 
tion  from  poor  or  mediocre  workmanship — the 
traps  of  sentimentalism,  of  false  feeling,  of  cheap 
pathos,  of  the  cheap  moral."  He  is  on  the  trail  of 
those  pious  mountebanks  who  "clutter  the  market 
places  with  their  booths,  mischievous  half -art  and 
tubs  of  tripe  and  soft  soap."  Superficially,  as  I 
say,  he  seems  to  have  made  little  progress  in  this 
benign  pogrom.  But  under  the  surface,  concealed 
from  a  first  glance,  he  has  undoubtedly  left  a  mark 


194  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

— faint,  perhaps,  but  still  a  mark.  To  be  a  civi 
lized  man  in  America  is  measurably  less  difficult, 
despite  the  war,  than  it  used  to  be,  say,  in  1890. 
One  may  at  least  speak  of  "Die  Walkiire"  without 
being  laughed  at  as  a  half-wit,  and  read  Stirner 
without  being  confused  with  Castro  and  Raisuli, 
and  argue  that  Huxley  got  the  better  of  Gladstone 
without  being  challenged  at  the  polls.  I  know  of 
no  man  who  pushed  in  that  direction  harder  than 
James  Huneker. 


IV.    PURITANISM  AS  A  LITERARY  FORCE 


IV 

PURITANISM   AS  A   LITERARY   FORCE 

§       1 

« */^1  ALVINISM,"  says  Dr.  Leon  Kellner,  in 
I  his   excellent   little   history   of   Ameri- 

^^*/  can  literature,1  "is  the  natural  theology 
of  the  disinherited;  it  never  flourished,  therefore, 
anywhere  as  it  did  in  the  barren  hills  of  Scotland 
and  in  the  wilds  of  North  America."  The  learned 
doctor  is  here  speaking  of  theology  in  what  may  be 
called  its  narrow  technical  sense — that  is,  as  a 
theory  of  God.  Under  Calvinism,  in  the  New 
World  as  well  as  in  the  Old,  it  became  no  more 
than  a  luxuriant  demonology;  even  God  himself 
was  transformed  into  a  superior  sort  of  devil,  ever 
wary  and  wholly  merciless.  That  primitive  de 
monology  still  survives  in  the  barbaric  doctrines  of 
the  Methodists  and  Baptists,  particularly  in  the 
South;  but  it  has  been  ameliorated,  even  there,  by  a 
growing  sense  of  the  divine  grace,  and  so  the  old 
God  of  Plymouth  Rock,  as  practically  conceived, 

1  American   Literature,   tr.   by   Julia   Franklin;    New   York, 
Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.,  1915. 

197 


198  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

is  now  scarcely  worse  than  the  average  jail  warden 
or  Italian  padrone.  On  the  ethical  side,  however, 
Calvinism  is  dying  a  much  harder  death,  and  we 
are  still  a  long  way  from  the  enlightenment.  Save 
where  Continental  influences  have  measurably  cor 
rupted  the  Puritan  idea — e.g.,  in  such  cities  as 
New  York,  San  Francisco  and  New  Orleans, — the 
prevailing  American  view  of  the  world  and  its  mys 
teries  is  still  a  moral  one,  and  no  other  human  con 
cern  gets  half  the  attention  that  is  endlessly  lav 
ished  upon  the  problem  of  conduct,  particularly  of 
the  other  fellow.  It  needed  no  official  announce 
ment  to  define  the  function  and  office  of  the 
republic  as  that  of  an  international  expert  in  mor 
als,  and  the  mentor  and  exemplar  of  the  more  back 
ward  nations.  Within,  as  well  as  without,  the 
eternal  rapping  of  knuckles  and  proclaiming  of 
new  austerities  goes  on.  The  American,  save  in 
moments  of  conscious  and  swiftly  lamented  devil 
try,  casts  up  all  ponderable  values,  including  even 
the  values  of  beauty,  in  terms  of  right  and  wrong. 
He  is  beyond  all  things  else,  a  judge  and  a  police 
man;  he  believes  firmly  that  there  is  a  mysterious 
power  in  law;  he  supports  and  embellishes  its 
operation  with  a  fanatical  vigilance. 

Naturally  enough,  this  moral  obsession  has  given 
a  strong  colour  to  American  literature.     In  truth,  it 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     199 

has  coloured  it  so  brilliantly  that  American  lit 
erature  is  set  off  sharply  from  all  other  literatures. 
In  none  other  will  you  find  so  wholesale  and  ec 
static  a  sacrifice  of  aesthetic  ideas,  of  all  the  fine 
gusto  of  passion  and  beauty,  to  notions  of  what  is 
meet,  proper  and  nice.  From  the  books  of  grisly 
sermons  that  were  the  first  American  contribution 
to  letters  down  to  that  amazing  literature  of  "in 
spiration"  which  now  flowers  so  prodigiously,  with 
two  literary  ex-Presidents  among  its  chief  virtuosi, 
one  observes  no  relaxation  of  the  moral  pressure. 
In  the  history  of  every  other  literature  there  have 
been  periods  of  what  might  be  called  moral  inno 
cence — periods  in  which  a  naif  joie  de  vivre  has 
broken  through  all  concepts  of  duty  and  respon 
sibility,  and  the  wonder  and  glory  of  the  universe 
have  been  hymned  with  unashamed  zest.  The  age 
of  Shakespeare  comes  to  mind  at  once :  the  violence 
of  the  Puritan  reaction  offers  a  measure  of  the  pen 
dulum's  wild  swing.  But  in  America  no  such  gen 
eral  rising  of  the  blood  has  ever  been  seen.  The  " 
literature  of  the  nation,  even  the  literature  of  the 
enlightened  minority,  has  been  under  harsh  Puri 
tan  restraints  from  the  beginning,  and  despite  a 
few  stealthy  efforts  at  revolt — usually  quite  without 
artistic  value  or  even  common  honesty,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  cheap  fiction  magazines  and  that  of. 


200  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

smutty  plays  on  Broadway,  and  always  very  short 
lived — it  shows  not  the  slightest  sign  of  emancipat 
ing  itself  today.  The  American,  try  as  he  will, 
can  never  imagine  any  work  of  the  imagination  as 
wholly  devoid  of  moral  content.  It  must  either 
tend  toward  the  promotion  of  virtue,  or  be  suspect 
and  abominable. 

If  any  doubt  of  this  is  in  your  mind,  turn  to  the 
critical  articles  in  the  newspapers  and  literary 
weeklies;  you  will  encounter  enough  proofs  in  a 
month's  explorations  to  convince  you  forever.  A 
novel  or  a  play  is  judged  among  us,  not  by  its  dig 
nity  of  conception,  its  artistic  honesty,  its  perfec 
tion  of  workmanship,  but  almost  entirely  by  its 
orthodoxy  of  doctrine,  its  platitudinousness,  its 
usefulness  as  a  moral  tract.  A  digest  of  the  re 
views  of  such  a  book  as  David  Graham  Phillips' 
"Susan  Lenox"  or  of  such  a  play  as  Ibsen's  "Hedda 
Gabler"  would  make  astounding  reading  for  a 
Continental  European.  Not  only  the  childish  in 
competents  who  write  for  the  daily  press,  but  also 
most  of  our  critics  of  experience  and  reputation, 
seem  quite  unable  to  estimate  a  piece  of  writing  as 
a  piece  of  writing,  a  work  of  art  as  a  work  of  art ; 
they  almost  inevitably  drag  in  irrelevant  gabble  as 
to  whether  this  or  that  personage  in  it  is  respectable, 
or  this  or  that  situation  in  accordance  with  the 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     201 

national  notions  of  what  is  edifying  and  nice. 
Fully  nine-tenths  of  the  reviews  of  Dreiser's  "The 
Titan,"  without  question  the  best  American  novel 
of  its  year,  were  devoted  chiefly  to  indignant  de 
nunciations  of  the  morals  of  Frank  Cowperwood, 
its  central  character.  That  the  man  was  superbly 
imagined  and  magnificently  depicted,  that  he  stood 
out  from  the  book  in  all  the  flashing  vigour  of  life, 
that  his  creation  was  an  artistic  achievement  of  a 
very  high  and  difficult  order — these  facts  seem  to 
have  made  no  impression  upon  the  reviewers  what 
ever.  They  were  Puritans  writing  for  Puritans, 
and  all  they  could  see  in  Cowperwood  was  an  anti- 
Puritan,  and  in  his  creator  another.  It  will  re 
main  for  Europeans,  I  daresay,  to  discover  the  true 
stature  of  "The  Titan,"  as  it  remained  for  Euro 
peans  to  discover  the  true  stature  of  "Sister  Car- 


rie." 


Just  how  deeply  this  corrective  knife  has  cut 
you  may  find  plainly  displayed  in  Dr.  Kellner's 
little  book.     He  sees  the  throttling  influence  of  an  4 
ever  alert  and  bellicose  Puritanism,  not  only  in  our 
grand  literature,  but  also  in  our  petit  literature,  our  4 
minor  poetry,  even  in  our  humour.     The  Puritan's 
utter  lack  of  aesthetic  sense,  his  distrust  of  all 
romantic  emotion,  his  unmatchable  intolerance  of 
opposition,  his  unbreakable  belief  in  his  own  bleak 


202  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

and  narrow  views,  his  savage  cruelty  of  attack,  his 
lust   for  relentless   and  barbarous  persecution — 
these  things  have  put  an  almost  unbearable  burden 
upon  the  exchange  of  ideas  in  the  United  States, 
and  particularly  upon  that  form  of  it  which  in 
volves  playing  with  them  for  the  mere  game's  sake. 
On  the  one  hand,  the  writer  who  would  deal  se 
riously  and  honestly  with  the  larger  problems  of 
life,  particularly  in  the  rigidly-partitioned  ethical 
field,  is  restrained  by  laws  that  would  have  kept  a 
Balzac  or  a  Zola  in  prison  from  year's  end  to  year's 
end;  and  on  the  other  hand  the  writer  who  would 
proceed  against  the  reigning  superstitions  by  mock 
ery  has  been  silenced  by  taboos  that  are  quite  as 
stringent,    and   by   an    indifference   that   is    even 
/worse.     For  all  our  professed  delight  in  and  ca- 
1  pacity  for  jocosity,  we  have  produced  so  far  but 
1  one  genuine  wit — Ambrose  Bierce — and,  save  to  a 
\small   circle,   he   remains   unknown   today.     Our 
/great   humourists,    including   even   Mark   Twain, 
have  had  to  take  protective  colouration,  whether 
willingly  or  unwillingly,  from  the  prevailing  ethi 
cal  foliage,  and  so  one  finds  them  levelling  their 
darts,  not  at  the  stupidities  of  the  Puritan  majority, 
\but  at  the  evidences  of  lessening  stupidity  in  the 
^anti-Puritan  minority.     In  other  words,  they  have 
done  battle,  not  against,  but  for  Philistinism — and 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     203 

Philistinism  is  no  more  than  another  name  for 
Puritanism.  Both  wage  a  ceaseless  warfare  upon 
beauty  in  its  every  form,  from  painting  to  religious 
ritual,  and  from  the  drama  to  the  dance — the  first 
because  it  holds  beauty  to  be  a  mean  and  stupid 
thing,  and  the  second  because  it  holds  beauty  to  be 
distracting  and  corrupting. 

Mark  Twain,  without  question,  was  a  great  artist; 
there  was  in  him  something  of  that  prodigality  of 
imagination,  that  aloof  engrossment  in  the  human 
comedy,  that  penetrating  cynicism,  which  one  asso 
ciates  with  the  great  artists  of  the  Renaissance. 
But  his  nationality  hung  around  his  neck  like  a 
millstone;  he  could  never  throw  off  his  native 
Philistinism.  One  ploughs  through  "The  Inno 
cents  Abroad"  and  through  parts  of  "A  Tramp 
Abroad"  with  incredulous  amazement.  Is  such 
coarse  and  ignorant  clowning  to  be  accepted  as 
humour,  as  great  humour,  as  the  best  humour  that 
the  most  humorous  of  peoples  has  produced?  Is 
it  really  the  mark  of  a  smart  fellow  to  lift  a 
peasant's  cackle  over  "Lohengrin"?  Is  Titian's 
chromo  of  Moses  in  the  bullrushes  seriously  to  be 
regarded  as  the  noblest  picture  in  Europe?  Is 
there  nothing  in  Latin  Christianity,  after  all,  save 
petty  grafting,  monastic  scandals  and  the  worship 
of  the  knuckles  and  shin-bones  of  dubious  saints? 


204  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

May  not  a  civilized  man,  disbelieving  in  it,  still 
find  himself  profoundly  moved  by  its  dazzling  his 
tory,  the  lingering  remnants  of  its  old  magnificence, 
the  charm  of  its  gorgeous  and  melancholy  loveli 
ness?  In  the  presence  of  all  beauty  of  man's  crea 
tion — in  brief,  of  what  we  roughly  call  art,  what 
ever  its  form — the  voice  of  Mark  Twain  was  the 
voice  of  the  Philistine.  A  literary  artist  of  very 
high  rank  himself,  with  instinctive  gifts  that  lifted 
him,  in  "Huckleberry  Finn"  to  kinship  with  Cer 
vantes  and  Aristophanes,  he  was  yet  so  far  the  vic 
tim  of  his  nationality  that  he  seems  to  have  had  no 
capacity  for  distinguishing  between  the  good  and 
the  bad  in  the  work  of  other  men  of  his  own  craft. 
The  literary  criticism  that  one  occasionally  finds  in 
his  writings  is  chiefly  trivial  and  ignorant;  his  pri 
vate  inclination  appears  to  have  been  toward  such 
romantic  sentimentality  as  entrances  school-boys; 
the  thing  that  interested  him  in  Shakespeare  was  not 
the  man's  colossal  genius,  but  the  absurd  theory 
that  Bacon  wrote  his  plays.  Had  he  been  born  in 
France  (the  country  of  his  chief  abomination!) 
instead  of  in  a  Puritan  village  of  the  American  hin 
terland,  I  venture  that  he  would  have  conquered 
the  world.  But  try  as  he  would,  being  what  he  was, 
he  could  not  get  rid  of  the  Puritan  smugness  and 
cocksureness,  the  Puritan  distrust  of  new  ideas,  the 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     205 

Puritan  incapacity  for  seeing  beauty  as  a  thing  in 
itself,  and  the  full  peer  of  the  true  and  the  good. 

It  is,  indeed,  precisely  in  the  works  of  such  men 
as  Mark  Twain  that  one  finds  the  best  proofs  of  the 
Puritan  influence  in  American  letters,  for  it  is  there 
that  it  is  least  expected  and  hence  most  significant. 
iOur   native   critics,    unanimously   Puritans   them- 
/selves,  are  anaesthetic  to  the  flavour,  but  to  Dr.  Kell- 
Iner,  with  his  half -European,  half -Oriental  culture, 
I  it  is  always  distinctly  perceptible.     He  senses  it, 
I  not  only  in  the  harsh  Calvinistic  fables  of  Haw- 
I  thorne  and  the  pious  gurglings  of  Longfellow,  but 
/  also  in  the  poetry  of  Bryant,  the  tea-party  niceness 
of  Howells,  the  "maiden-like  reserve"  of  James 
1  Lane  Allen,  and  even  in  the  work  of  Joel  Chand- 
\ler  Harris.     What!     A  Southern  Puritan?     Well, 
why  not?     What  could  be  more  erroneous  than  the 
common  assumption  that  Puritanism  is  exclusively 
a  Northern,  a  New  England,  madness?     The  truth 
is  that  it  is  as  thoroughly  national  as  the  kindred 
belief  in  the  devil,  and  runs  almost  unobstructed 
from  Portland  to  Portland  and  from  the  Lakes  to 
the  Gulf.     It  is  in  the  South,  indeed,  and  not  in  the 
North,  that  it  takes  on  its  most  bellicose  and  ex 
travagant  forms.     Between  the  upper  tier  of  New 
England  and  the  Potomac  river  there  was  not  a 
single  prohibition  state — but  thereafter,  alas,  they 


206  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

came  in  huge  blocks!  And  behind  that  infinitely 
prosperous  Puritanism  there  is  a  long  and  unbroken 
tradition.  Berkeley,  the  last  of  the  Cavaliers,  was 
kicked  out  of  power  in  Virginia  so  long  ago  as 
1650.  Lord  Baltimore,  the  Proprietor  of  Mary 
land,  was  brought  to  terms  by  the  Puritans  of  the 
Severn  in  1657.  The  Scotch  Covenanter,  the  most* 
uncompromising  and  unenlightened  of  all  Puri 
tans,  flourished  in  the  Carolinas  from  the  start,  and 
in  1698,  or  thereabout,  he  was  reinforced  from 
New  England.  In  1757  a  band  of  Puritans  in 
vaded  what  is  now  Georgia — and  Georgia  has  been 
a  Puritan  barbarism  ever  since.  Even  while  the 
early  (and  half -mythical)  Cavaliers  were  still  in 
nominal  control  of  all  these  Southern  plantations, 
they  clung  to  the  sea-coast.  The  population  that 
moved  down  the  chain  of  the  Appalachians  during 
the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  then 
swept  over  them  into  the  Mississippi  valley,  was 
composed  almost  entirely  of  Puritans — chiefly  in- 
transigeants  from  New  England  (where  Unita- 
rianism  was  getting  on  its  legs),  kirk-crazy  Scotch, 
and  that  plupious  and  beauty-hating  folk,  the 
Scotch-Irish.  "In  the  South  today,"  said  John 
Fiske  a  generation  ago,  "there  is  more  Puritanism 
surviving  than  in  New  England."  In  that  whole 
region,  an  area  three  times  as  large  as  France  or 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     207 

Germany,  there  is  not  a  single  orchestra  capable  of 
playing  Beethoven's  C  minor  symphony,  or  a  single 
painting  worth  looking  at,  or  a  single  public  build 
ing  or  monument  of  any  genuine  distinction,  or  a 
single  factory  devoted  to  the  making  of  beautiful 
things,  or  a  single  poet,  novelist,  historian,  musi 
cian,  painter  or  sculptor  whose  reputation  extends 
beyond  his  own  country.  Between  the  Mason  and 
Dixon  line  and  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  there  is 
but  one  opera-house,  and  that  one  was  built  by  a 
Frenchman,  and  is  now,  I  believe,  closed.  The 
only  domestic  art  this  huge  and  opulent  empire 
knows  is  in  the  hands  of  Mexican  greasers ;  its  only 
native  music  it  owes  to  the  despised  negro ;  its  only 
genuine  poet  was  permitted  to  die  up  an  alley  like 
a  stray  dog. 

§2 

In  studying  the  anatomy  and  physiology  of 
American  Puritanism,  and  its  effects  upon  the  na 
tional  literature,  one  quickly  discerns  two  main 
streams  of  influence.  On  the  one  hand,  there  is  the 
influence  of  the  original  Puritans — whether  of  New 
England  or  of  the  South — ,  who  came  to  the  New 
World  with  a  ready-made  philosophy  of  the  utmost 
clarity,  positiveness  and  inclusiveness  of  scope,  and 
who  attained  to  such  a  position  of  political  and 


208  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

intellectual  leadership  that  they  were  able  to  force 
it  almost  unchanged  upon  the  whole  population,  and 
to  endow  it  with  such  vitality  that  it  successfully 
resisted  alien  opposition  later  on.  And  on  the 
other  hand,  one  sees  a  complex  of  social  and  eco 
nomic  conditions  which  worked  in  countless  irre 
sistible  ways  against  the  rise  of  that  dionysian 
spirit,  that  joyful  acquiescence  in  life,  that  philos 
ophy  of  the  Ja-sager,  which  offers  to  Puritanism, 
today  as  in  times  past,  its  chief  and  perhaps  only 
effective  antagonism.  In  other  words,  the  Ameri 
can  of  the  days  since  the  Revolution  has  had  Puri 
tanism  diligently  pressed  upon  him  from  without, 
and  at  the  same  time  he  has  led,  in  the  main,  a 
life  that  has  engendered  a  chronic  hospitality  to  it, 
or  at  all  events  to  its  salient  principles,  within. 

Dr.  Kellner  accurately  describes  the  process 
whereby  the  aesthetic  spirit,  and  its  concomitant 
spirit  of  joy,  were  squeezed  out  of  the  original  New 
Englanders,  so  that  no  trace  of  it  showed  in  their 
literature,  or  even  in  their  lives,  for  a  century  and  a 
half  after  the  first  settlements.  "Absorption  in 
God,"  he  says,  "seems  incompatible  with  the  pres 
entation  (i.e.,  aesthetically)  of  mankind.  The  God 
of  the  Puritans  was  in  this  respect  a  jealous  God 
who  brooked  no  sort  of  creative  rivalry.  The  in 
spired  moments  of  the  loftiest  souls  were  filled  with 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     209 

the  thought  of  God  and  His  designs;  spiritual  life 
was  wholly  dominated  by  solicitude  regarding  sal 
vation,  the  hereafter,  grace;  how  could  such  petty 
concerns  as  personal  experience  of  a  lyric  nature, 
the  transports  or  the  pangs  of  love,  find  utterance? 
What  did  a  lyric  occurrence  like  the  first  call  of  the 
cuckoo,  elsewhere  so  welcome,  or  the  first  sight  of 
the  snowdrop,  signify  compared  with  the  last  Sun 
day's  sermon  and  the  new  interpretation  of  the  old 
riddle  of  evil  in  the  world?  And  apart  from  the 
fact  that  everything  of  a  personal  nature  must  have 
appeared  so  trivial,  all  the  sources  of  secular  lyric 
poetry  were  offensive  and  impious  to  Puritan 
theology.  .  .  .  One  thing  is  an  established  fact:  up 
to  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century  America  had 
no  belletristic  literature." 

This  Puritan  bedevilment  by  the  idea  of  personal 
sin,  this  reign  of  the  God-crazy,  gave  way  in  later 
years,  as  we  shall  see,  to  other  and  somewhat  milder 
forms  of  pious  enthusiam.  At  the  time  of  the 
Revolution,  indeed,  the  importation  of  French 
political  ideas  was  accompanied  by  an  importation 
of  French  theological  ideas,  and  such  men  as  Frank 
lin  and  Jefferson  dallied  with  what,  in  those  days 
at  least,  was  regarded  as  downright  atheism. 
Even  in  New  England  this  influence  made  itself 
felt;  there  was  a  gradual  letting  down  of  Calvinism 


210  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

to  the  softness  of  Unitarianism,  and  that  change  was 
presently  to  flower  in  the  vague  temporizing  of 
Transcendentalism.  But  as  Puritanism,  in  the 
strict  sense,  declined  in  virulence  and  took  decep 
tive  new  forms,  there  was  a  compensating  growth  of 
its  brother,  Philistinism,  and  by  the  first  quarter  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  the  distrust  of  beauty,  and 
of  the  joy  that  is  its  object,  was  as  firmly  estab 
lished  throughout  the  land  as  it  had  ever  been  in 
New  England.  The  original  Puritans  had  at  least 
been  men  of  a  certain  education,  and  even  of  a 
certain  austere  culture.  They  were  inordinately 
hostile  to  beauty  in  all  its  forms,  but  one  somehow 
suspects  that  much  of  their  hostility  was  due  to  a 
sense  of  their  weakness  before  it,  a  realization  of 
its  disarming  psychical  pull.  But  the  American  of 
the  new  republic  was  of  a  different  kidney.  He 
was  not  so  much  hostile  to  beauty  as  devoid  of  any 
consciousness  of  it;  he  stood  as  unmoved  before  its 
phenomena  as  a  savage  before  a  table  of  loga 
rithms.  What  he  had  set  up  on  this  continent,  in 
brief,  was  a  commonwealth  of  peasants  and  small 
traders,  a  paradise  of  the  third-rate,  and  its  national 
philosophy,  almost  wholly  unchecked  by  the  more 
sophisticated  and  civilized  ideas  of  an  aristocracy, 
iras  precisely  the  philosophy  that  one  finds  among 
peasants  and  small  traders  at  all  times  and  every- 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     211 

where.  The  difference  between  the  United  States 
and  any  other  nation  did  not  lie  in  any  essential 
difference  between  American  peasants  and  other 
peasants,  but  simply  in  the  fact  that  here,  alone, 
the  voice  of  the  peasant  was  the  single  voice  of  the 
nation — that  here,  alone,  the  only  way  to  eminence 
and  public  influence  was  the  way  of  acquiescence 
in  the  opinions  and  prejudices  of  the  untutored  and 
^Philistine  mob.  Jackson  was  the  Stammvater  of 
the  new  statesmen  and  philosophers;  he  carried  the 
mob's  distrust  of  good  taste  even  into  the  field  of 
conduct ;  he  was  the  first  to  put  the  rewards  of  con 
formity  above  the  dictates  of  common  decency;  he 
founded  a  whole  hierarchy  of  Philistine  messiahs, 
the  roaring  of  which  still  belabours  the  ear. 

Once  established,  this  culture  of  the  intellec 
tually  disinherited  tended  to  defend  and  perpetuate 
itself.  On  the  one  hand,  there  was  no  appearance 
of  a  challenge  from  within,  for  the  exigent  prob 
lems  of  existence  in  a  country  that  was  yet  but  half 
settled  and  organized  left  its  people  with  no  energy 
for  questioning  what  at  least  satisfied  their  gross 
needs,  and  so  met  the  pragmatic  test.  And  on  the 
other  hand,  there  was  no  critical  pressure  from 
without,  for  the  English  culture  which  alone 
reached  over  the  sea  was  itself  entering  upon  its 
Victorian  decline,  and  the  influence  of  the  native 


212  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

aristocracy — the  degenerating  Junkers  of  the  great 
estates  and  the  boorish  magnates  of  the  city  bour 
geoisie — was  quite  without  any  cultural  direction 
at  all.  The  chief  concern  of  the  American  people, 
even  above  the  bread-and-butter  question,  was  poli 
tics.  They  were  incessantly  hag-ridden  by  politi 
cal  difficulties,  both  internal  and  external,  of  an 
inordinate  complexity,  and  these  occupied  all  the 
leisure  they  could  steal  from  the  sordid  work  of 
everyday.  More,  their  new  and  troubled  political 
ideas  tended  to  absorb  all  the  rancorous  certainty 
of  their  fading  religious  ideas,  so  that  devotion  to 
a  theory  or  a  candidate  became  translated  into  de 
votion  to  a  revelation,  and  the  game  of  politics 
turned  itself  into  a  holy  war.  The  custom  of  con 
necting  purely  political  doctrines  with  pietistic  con 
cepts  of  an  inflammable  nature,  then  firmly  set  up 
by  skilful  persuaders  of  the  mob,  has  never  quite 
died  out  in  the  United  States.  There  has  not  been 
a  presidential  contest  since  Jackson's  day  without 
its  Armageddons,  its  marching  of  Christian  sol 
diers,  its  crosses  of  gold,  its  crowns  of  thorns. 
The  most  successful  American  politicians,  begin 
ning  with  the  anti-slavery  agitators,  have  been  those 
most  adept  at  twisting  the  ancient  gauds  and  shib 
boleths  of  Puritanism  to  partisan  uses.  Every 
campaign  that  we  have  seen  for  eighty  years  has 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     213 

been,  on  each  side,  a  pursuit  of  bugaboos,  a  de 
nunciation  of  heresies,  a  snouting  up  of  immoral 
ities. 

But  it  was  during  the  long  contest  against  slavery, 
beginning  with  the  appearance  of  William  Lloyd 
Garrison's  Liberator  in  1831  and  ending  at  Ap- 
pomattox,  that  this  gigantic  supernaturalization  of 
politics  reached  its  most  astounding  heights.  In 
those  days,  indeed,  politics  and  religion  coalesced 
in  a  manner  not  seen  in  the  world  since  the 
Middle  Ages,  and  the  combined  pull  of  the 
two  was  so  powerful  that  none  could  quite  resist 
it.  All  men  of  any  ability  and  ambition  turned 
to  political  activity  for  self-expression.  It  en 
gaged  the  press  to  the  exclusion  of  everything 
else;  it  conquered  the  pulpit;  it  even  laid  its 
hand  upon  industry  and  trade.  Drawing  the 
best  imaginative  talent  into  its  service — Jeffer 
son  and  Lincoln  may  well  stand  as  examples 
— it  left  the  cultivation  of  belles  lettres,  and 
of  all  the  other  arts  no  less,  to  women  and  ad 
mittedly  second-rate  men.  And  when,  breaking 
through  this  taboo,  some  chance  first-rate  man  gave 
himself  over  to  purely  aesthetic  expression,  his  re 
ward  was  not  only  neglect,  but  even  a  sort  of 
ignominy,  as  if  such  enterprises  were  not  fitting 
for  males  with  hair  on  their  chests.  I  need  not 


214  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

point  to  Poe  and  Whitman,  both  disdained  as 
dreamers  and  wasters,  and  both  proceeded  against 
with  the  utmost  rigours  of  outraged  Philistinism. 

In  brief,  the  literature  of  that  whole  period,  as 
Algernon  Tassin  shows  in  "The  Magazine  in  Amer 
ica,"  l  was  almost  completely  disassociated  from 
life  as  men  were  then  living  it.  Save  one  counts 
in  such  crude  politico-puritan  tracts  as  "Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin,"  it  is  difficult  to  find  a  single  con 
temporaneous  work  that  interprets  the  culture  of 
the  time,  or  even  accurately  represents  it.  Later 
on,  it  found  historians  and  anatomists,  and  in  one 
work,  at  least,  to  wit,  "Huckleberry  Finn,"  it  was 
studied  and  projected  with  the  highest  art,  but  no 
such  impulse  to  make  imaginative  use  of  it  showed 
itself  contemporaneously,  and  there  was  not  even 
the  crude  sentimentalization  of  here  and  now  that 
one  finds  in  the  popular  novels  of  today.  Feni- 
more  Cooper  filled  his  romances,  not  with  the  peo 
ple  about  him,  but  with  the  Indians  beyond  the 
sky-line,  and  made  them  half-fabulous  to  boot. 
Irving  told  fairy  tales  about  the  forgotten  Knicker 
bockers;  Hawthorne  turned  backward  to  the  Puri 
tans  of  Plymouth  Rock ;  Longfellow  to  the  Acadians 
and  the  prehistoric  Indians;  Emerson  took  flight 
from  earth  altogether;  even  Poe  sought  refuge  in  a 

i  New  York,  Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.,  1916. 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     215 

land  of  fantasy.  It  was  only  the  frank  second- 
raters — e.g.,  Whittier  and  Lowell — who  ventured 
to  turn  to  the  life  around  them,  and  the  banality 
of  the  result  is  a  sufficient  indication  of  the  crude- 
ness  of  the  current  taste,  and  the  mean  position  as 
signed  to  the  art  of  letters.  This  was  pre-emi 
nently  the  era  of  the  moral  tale,  the  Sunday-school 
book.  Literature  was  conceived,  not  as  a  thing  in 
itself,  but  merely  as  a  hand-maiden  to  politics  or 
religion.  The  great  celebrity  of  Emerson  in  New 
England  was  not  the  celebrity  of  a  literary  artist, 
but  that  of  a  theologian  and  metaphysician;  he 
was  esteemed  in  much  the  same  way  that  Jonathan 
Edwards  had  been  esteemed.  Even  down  to  our 
own  time,  indeed,  his  vague  and  empty  philosophiz 
ing  has  been  put  above  his  undeniable  capacity 
for  graceful  utterance,  and  it  remained  for  Dr. 
Kellner  to  consider  him  purely  as  a  literary  artist, 
and  to  give  him  due  praise  for  his  skill. 

The  Civil  War  brought  that  era  of  sterility  to  an 
end.  As  I  shall  show  later  on,  the  shock  of  it  com 
pletely  reorganized  the  American  scheme  of  things, 
and  even  made  certain  important  changes  in  the 
national  Puritanism,  or,  at  all  events,  in  its  ma 
chinery.  Whitman,  whose  career  straddled,  so  to 
speak,  the  four  years  of  the  war,  was  the  leader — 
and  for  a  long  while,  the  only  trooper — of  a  double 


216  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

revolt.  On  the  one  hand  he  offered  a  courageous 
challenge  to  the  intolerable  prudishness  and  dirty- 
mindedness  of  Puritanism,  and  on  the  other  hand 
he  boldly  sought  the  themes  and  even  the  modes  of 
expression  of  his  poetry  in  the  arduous,  contentious 
and  highly  melodramatic  life  that  lay  all  about 
him.  Whitman,  however,  was  clearly  before  his 
time.  His  countrymen  could  see  him  only  as  im- 
moralist;  save  for  a  pitiful  few  of  them,  they  were 
dead  to  any  understanding  of  his  stature  as  artist, 
and  even  unaware  that  such  a  category  of  men  ex 
isted.  He  was  put  down  as  an  invader  of  the  pub 
lic  decencies,  a  disturber  of  the  public  peace;  even 
his  eloquent  war  poems,  surely  the  best  of  all  his 
work,  were  insufficient  to  get  him  a  hearing;  the 
sentimental  rubbish  of  "The  Blue  and  the  Gray" 
and  the  ecstatic  supernaturalism  of  "The  Battle 
Hymn  of  the  Republic"  were  far  more  to  the  public 
taste.  Where  Whitman  failed,  indeed,  all  sub 
sequent  explorers  of  the  same  field  have  failed  with 
him,  and  the  great  war  has  left  no  more  mark  upon 
American  letters  than  if  it  had  never  been  fought. 
Nothing  remotely  approaching  the  bulk  and  beam 
of  Tolstoi's  "War  and  Peace,"  or,  to  descend  to  a 
smaller  scale,  Zola's  "The  Attack  on  the  Mill,"  has 
come  out  of  it.  Its  appeal  to  the  national  imagina 
tion  was  undoubtedly  of  the  most  profound  char- 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     217 

acter;  it  coloured  politics  for  fifty  years,  and  is 
today  a  dominating  influence  in  the  thought  of 
whole  sections  of  the  American  people.  But  in  all 
that  stirring  up  there  was  no  upheaval  of  artistic 
consciousness,  for  the  plain  reason  that  there  was 
no  artistic  consciousness  there  to  heave  up,  and  all 
we  have  in  the  way  of  Civil  War  literature  is  a  few 
conventional  melodramas,  a  few  half -forgotten 
short  stories  by  Ambrose  Bierce  and  Stephen  Crane, 
and  a  half  dozen  idiotic  popular  songs  in  the  man 
ner  of  Randall's  "Maryland,  My  Maryland." 

In  the  seventies  and  eighties,  with  the  appear 
ance  of  such  men  as  Henry  James,  William  Dean 
Howells,  Mark  Twain  and  Bret  Harte,  a  better  day 
seemed  to  be  dawning.  Here,  after  a  full  century 
of  infantile  romanticizing,  were  four  writers  who 
at  least  deserved  respectful  consideration  as  liter 
ary  artists,  and  what  is  more,  three  of  them  turned 
from  the  conventionalized  themes  of  the  past  to  the 
teeming  and  colourful  life  that  lay  under  their 
noses.  But  this  promise  of  better  things  was  soon 
found  to  be  no  more  than  a  promise.  Mark  Twain, 
after  "The  Gilded  Age,"  slipped  back  into  ro 
manticism  tempered  by  Philistinism,  and  was  pres 
ently  in  the  era  before  the  Civil  War,  and  finally 
in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  even  beyond.  Harte,  a 
brilliant  technician,  had  displayed  his  whole  stock 


218  A  BOOK  OF  PREF ACl  > 

when  he  had  displayed  his  technique:  his  stories 
were  not  even  superfieially  true  to  the  life  they 
presumed  to  depict;  one  searched  them  in  vain  for 
an  interpretation  of  it;  they  were  simply  idle  tales. 
As  for  Howells  and  James,  both  quickly  showed 
that  timorousness  and  reticence  which  are  the  dis 
tinguishing  marks  of  the  Puritan,  even  in  his  most 
intellectual  incarnations.  The  American  scene 
that  they  depicted  with  such  meticulous  care  was 
chiefly  peopled  with  marionettes.  They  shrunk, 
characteristically,  from  those  larger,  harsher 
clashes  of  will  and  purpose  which  one  finds  in  all 
truly  first-rate  literature.  In  particular,  they 
shrunk  from  any  interpretation  of  life  which 
grounded  itself  upon  an  acknowledgment  of  its  in 
exorable  and  inexplicable  tragedy.  In  the  vast 
combat  of  instincts  and  aspirations  about  them 
they  saw  only  a  feeble  jousting  of  comedians,  un- 
serious  and  insignificant.  Of  the  great  questions 
that  have  agitated  die  minds  of  men  in  Howells' 
time  one  gets  no  more  than  a  faint  and  far-away 
echo  in  his  novels.  His  investigations,  one  may 
say,  are  carried  on  in  vacuo;  his  discoveries  are 
not  expressed  in  terms  of  passion,  but  in  terms  of 
giggles. 

In  the  followers  of  Howells  and  James  one  finds 
little  save  an  empty  imitation  of  their  emptiness, 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     219 

a  somewhat  puerile  parodying  of  their  highly  art 
ful  but  essentially  personal  technique.  To  wade 
through  the  books  of  such  characteristic  American 
fictioneers  as  Frances  Hodgson  Burnett,  Mary  E. 
Wilkins  Freeman,  F.  Hopkinson  Smith,  Alice 
Brown,  James  Lane  Allen,  Winston  Churchill,  Ellen 
Glasgow,  Gertrude  Atherton  and  Sarah  Orne  Jewett 
is  to  undergo  an  experience  that  is  almost  terrible. 
The  flow  of  words  is  completely  purged  of  ideas; 
in  place  of  them  one  finds  no  more  than  a  romantic 
restatement  of  all  the  old  platitudes  and  formulae. 
To  call  such  an  emission  of  graceful  poppycock  a 
literature,  of  course,  is  to  mouth  an  absurdity,  and 
yet,  if  the  college  professors  who  write  treatises  on 
letters  are  to  be  believed,  it  is  the  best  we  have  to 
show.  Turn,  for  example,  to  "A  History  of  Amer 
ican  Literature  Since  1870,"  by  Prof.  Fred  Lewis 
Pattee,  one  of  the  latest  and  undoubtedly  one  of 
the  least  unintelligent  of  these  books.  In  it  the 
gifted  pedagogue  gives  extended  notice  to  no  less 
than  six  of  the  nine  writers  I  have  mentioned,  and 
upon  all  of  them  his  verdicts  are  flattering.  He 
bestows  high  praises,  direct  and  indirect,  upon 
Mrs.  Freeman's  "grim  and  austere"  manner,  her 
"repression,"  her  entire  lack  of  poetical  illumina 
tion.  He  compares  Miss  Jewett  to  both  Howells 
and  Hawthorne,  not  to  mention  Mrs.  Gaskell — and 


220  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

Addison!  He  grows  enthusiastic  over  a  hollow 
piece  of  fine  writing  by  Miss  Brown.  And  he  for 
gets  altogether  to  mention  Dreiser,  or  Sinclair,  or 
Medill  Patterson,  or  Harry  Leon  Wilson,  or  George 
Ade!  ... 

So  much  for  the  best.  The  worst  is  beyond  de 
scription.  France  has  her  Brieux  and  her  Henry 
Bordeaux;  Germany  has  her  Muhlbach,  her  stars  of 
the  Gartenlaube;  England  contributes  Caine,  Cor- 
elli,  Oppenheim  and  company.  But  it  is  in  our 
country  alone  that  banality  in  letters  takes  on  the 
proportions  of  a  national  movement;  it  is  only  here 
that  a  work  of  the  imagination  is  habitually  judged 
by  its  sheer  emptiness  of  ideas,  its  fundamental 
platitudinousness,  its  correspondence  with  the  im 
becility  of  mob  thinking;  it  is  only  here  that  "glad" 
books  run  up  sales  of  hundreds  of  thousands. 
Richard  Harding  Davis,  with  his  ideals  of  a  floor 
walker;  Gene  Stratton-Porter,  with  her  snuffling 
sentimentality;  Robert  W.  Chambers,  with  his  "so 
ciety"  romances  for  shop-girls;  Irvin  Cobb,  with 
his  laboured,  Ayers9  Almanac  jocosity;  the  authors 
of  the  Saturday  Evening  Post  school,  with  their 
heroic  drummers  and  stockbrokers,  their  ecstatic 
celebration  of  the  stupid,  the  sordid,  the  ignoble — 
these,  after  all,  are  our  typical  literati.  The  Puri 
tan  fear  of  ideas  is  the  master  of  them  all.  Some 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     221 

of  them,  in  truth,  most  of  them,  have  undeniable 
talent;  in  a  more  favourable  environment  not  a 
few  of  them  might  be  doing  sound  work.  But  they 
see  how  small  the  ring  is,  and  they  make  their 
tricks  small  to  fit  it.  Not  many  of  them  ever 
venture  a  leg  outside.  The  lash  of  the  ringmaster 
is  swift,  and  it  stings  damnably.  .  .  . 

I  say  not  many;  I  surely  do  not  mean  none  at 
all.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  have  been  intermit 
tent  rebellions  against  the  prevailing  pecksniffery 
and  sentimentality  ever  since  the  days  of  Irving 
and  Hawthorne.  Poe  led  one  of  them — as  critic 
more  than  as  creative  artist.  His  scathing  attacks 
upon  the  Gerald  Stanley  Lees,  the  Hamilton  Wright 
Mabies  and  the  George  E.  Woodberrys  of  his  time 
keep  a  liveliness  and  appositeness  that  the  years 
have  not  staled;  his  criticism  deserves  to  be  better 
remembered.  Poe  sensed  the  Philistine  pull  of  a 
Puritan  civilization  as  none  had  before  him,  and 
combated  it  with  his  whole  artillery  of  rhetoric. 
Another  rebel,  of  course,  was  Whitman;  how  he 
came  to  grief  is  too  well  known  to  need  recalling. 
What  is  less  familiar  is  the  fact  that  both  the  At 
lantic  Monthly  and  the  Century  (first  called  Scrib- 
nefs]  were  set  up  by  men  in  revolt  against  the 
reign  of  mush,  as  Putnam? s  and  the  Dial  had  been 
before  them.  The  salutatory  of  the  Dial,  dated 


222  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

1840,  stated  the  case  against  the  national  mugginess 
clearly.  The  aim  of  the  magazine,  it  said,  was  to 
oppose  "that  rigour  of  our  conventions  of  religion 
and  education  which  is  turning  us  to  stone"  and  to 
give  expression  to  "new  views  and  the  dreams  of 
youth."  Alas,  for  these  brave  revolted  Put 
nam  s  succumbed  to  the  circumambient  rigours  and 
duly  turned  to  stone,  and  is  now  no  more.  The 
Atlantic,  once  so  heretical,  has  become  as  respecta 
ble  as  the  New  York  Evening  Post.  As  for  the 
Dial,  it  was  until  lately  the  very  pope  of  orthodoxy 
and  jealously  guarded  the  college  professors  who 
read  it  from  the  pollution  of  ideas.  Only  the 
Century  has  kept  the  faith  unbrokenly.  It  is,  in 
deed,  the  one  first-class  American  magazine  that 
has  always  welcomed  newcomers,  and  that  main 
tains  an  intelligent  contact  with  the  literature  that 
is.  in  being,  and  that  consistently  tries  to  make  the 
best  terms  possible  with  the  dominant  Philistinism. 
It  cannot  go  the  whole  way  without  running  into 
danger;  let  it  be  said  to  the  credit  of  its  editors 
that  they  have  more  than  once  braved  that  danger. 
The  tale  might  be  lengthened.  Mark  Twain,  in 
his  day,  felt  the  stirrings  of  revolt,  and  not  all  his 
Philistinism  was  sufficient  to  hold  him  altogether 
in  check.  If  you  want  to  find  out  about  the  strug 
gle  that  went  on  within  him,  read  the  biography  by 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     223 

Albert  Bigelow  Paine,  or,  better  still,  "The  Mysteri 
ous  Stranger"  and  "What  is  Man?"  Alive,  he  had 
his  position  to  consider;  dead,  he  now  speaks  out. 
In  the  preface  to  "What  is  Man?"  dated  1905, 
there  is  a  curious  confession  of  his  incapacity  for 
defying  the  taboos  which  surrounded  him.  The 
studies  for  the  book,  he  says,  were  begun  "twenty- 
five  or  twenty-seven  years  ago" — the  period  of  "A 
Tramp  Abroad"  and  "The  Prince  and  the  Pauper." 
It  was  actually  written  "seven  years  ago" — that  is, 
just  after  "Following  the  Equator"  and  "Personal 
Recollections  of  Joan  of  Arc."  And  why  did  it 
lie  so  long  in  manuscript,  and  finally  go  out  stealth 
ily,  under  a  private  imprint?  1  Simply  because, 
as  Mark  frankly  confesses,  he  "dreaded  (and  could 
not  bear)  the  disapproval  of  the  people  around" 
him.  He  knew  how  hard  his  fight  for  recognition 
had  been;  he  knew  what  direful  penalties  outraged 
orthodoxy  could  inflict;  he  had  in  him  the  some 
what  pathetic  discretion  of  a  respectable  family 
man.  But,  dead,  he  is  safely  beyond  reprisal,  and 
so,  after  a  prudent  interval,  the  faithful  Paine  be 
gins  printing  books  in  which,  writing  knowingly 
behind  six  feet  of  earth,  he  could  set  down  his  true 
ideas  without  fear.  Some  day,  perhaps,  we  shall 

1  The  first  edition  for  public  sale  did  not  appear  until  June, 
1917,  and  in  it  the  preface  was  suppressed. 


224  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

have  his  microbe  story,  and  maybe  even  his  picture 
of  the  court  of  Elizabeth. 

A  sneer  in  Prof.  Pattee's  history,  before  men 
tioned,  recalls  the  fact  that  Hamlin  Garland  was 
also  a  rebel  in  his  day  and  bawled  for  the  Truth 
with  a  capital  T.  That  was  in  1893.  Two  years 
later  the  guardians  of  the  national  rectitude  fell 
afoul  of  "Rose  of  Butchers'  Coolly"  and  Garland 
began  to  think  it  over;  today  he  devotes  himself  to 
the  safer  enterprise  of  chasing  spooks;  his  name 
is  conspicuously  absent  from  the  Dreiser  Protest. 
Nine  years  before  his  brief  offending  John  Hay  had 
set  off  a  discreet  bomb  in  "The  Bread-Winners" — 
anonymously  because  "my  standing  would  be  seri 
ously  compromised"  by  an  avowal.  Six  years 
later  Frank  Norris  shook  up  the  Phelpses  and 
Mores  of  the  time  with  "McTeague."  Since  then 
there  have  been  assaults  timorous  and  assaults 
head-long — by  Bierce,  by  Dreiser,  by  Phillips,  by 
Fuller — by  Mary  MacLanes  and  by  Upton  Sin- 
clairs — by  ploughboy  poets  from  the  Middle 
West  and  by  jitney  geniuses  in  Greenwich  Village 
— assaults  gradually  tapering  off  to  a  mere  sopho- 
moric  brashness  and  deviltry.  And  all  of  them 
like  snow-ballings  of  Verdun.  All  of  them  petered 
out  and  ineffectual.  The  normal,  the  typical 
American  book  of  today  is  as  fully  a  remouthing 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     225 

of  old  husks  as  the  normal  book  of  Griswold's  day. 
The  whole  atmosphere  of  our  literature,  in  William 
James'  phrase,  is  "mawkish  and  dishwatery." 
Books  are  still  judged  among  us,  not  by  their  form 
and  organization  as  works  of  art,  their  accuracy 
and  vividness  as  representations  of  life,  their  valid 
ity  and  perspicacity  as  interpretations  of  it,  but  by 
their  conformity  to  the  national  prejudices,  their 
accordance  with  set  standards  of  niceness  and  pro 
priety.  The  thing  irrevocably  demanded  is  a 
"sane"  book;  the  ideal  is  a  "clean,"  an  "inspir 
ing,"  a  "glad"  book. 

§3 

All  this  may  be  called  the  Puritan  impulse  from 
within.  It  is,  indeed,  but  a  single  manifestation 
of  one  of  the  deepest  prejudices  of  a  religious  and 
half-cultured  people — the  prejudice  against  beauty 
as  a  form  of  debauchery  and  corruption — the  dis 
trust  of  all  ideas  that  do  not  fit  readily  into  certain 
accepted  axioms — the  belief  in  the  eternal  validity 
of  moral  concepts — in  brief,  the  whole  mental  slug 
gishness  of  the  lower  orders  of  men.  But  in  ad 
dition  to  this  internal  resistance,  there  has  been  laid 
upon  American  letters  the  heavy  hand  of  a  Puritan 
authority  from  without,  and  no  examination  of  the 


226  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

history  and  present  condition  of  our  literature  could 
be  of  any  value  which  did  not  take  it  constantly 
into  account,  and  work  out  the  means  of  its  in 
fluence  and  operation.  That  authority,  as  I  shall 
show,  transcends  both  in  power  and  in  alertness  the 
natural  reactions  of  the  national  mind,  and  is  in 
comparably  more  potent  in  combating  ideas.  It 
is  supported  by  a  body  of  law  that  is  unmatched  in 
any  other  country  of  Christendom,  and  it  is  ex 
ercised  with  a  fanatical  harshness  and  vigilance 
that  make  escape  from  its  operations  well  nigh  im 
possible.  Some  of  its  effects,  both  direct  and  in 
direct,  I  shall  describe  later,  but  before  doing  so 
it  may  be  well  to  trace  its  genesis  and  develop 
ment. 

At  bottom,  of  course,  it  rests  upon  the  inherent 
Puritanism  of  the  people;  it  could  not  survive  a 
year  if  they  were  opposed  to  the  principle  visible  in 
it.  That  deep-seated  and  uncorrupted  Puritanism, 
that  conviction  of  the  pervasiveness  of  sin,  of  the 
supreme  importance  of  moral  correctness,  of  the 
need  of  savage  and  inquisitorial  laws,  has  been  a 
dominating  force  in  American  life  since  the  very 
beginning.  There  has  never  been  any  question 
before  the  nation,  whether  political  or  economic, 
religious  or  military,  diplomatic  or  sociological, 
which  did  not  resolve  itself,  soon  or  late,  into  a 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     227 

purely  moral  question.  Nor  has  there  ever  been 
any  surcease  of  the  spiritual  eagerness  which  lay 
at  the  bottom  of  the  original  Puritan's  moral  obses 
sion:  the  American  has  been,  from  the  very  start, 
a  man  genuinely  interested  in  the  eternal  mysteries, 
and  fearful  of  missing  their  correct  solution.  The 
frank  theocracy  of  the  New  England  colonies  had 
scarcely  succumbed  to  the  libertarianism  of  a  god 
less  Crown  before  there  came  the  Great  Awakening 
of  1734,  with  its  orgies  of  homiletics  and  its  resto 
ration  of  talmudism  to  the  first  place  among  polite 
sciences.  The  Revolution,  of  course,  brought  a 
set-back:  the  colonists  faced  so  urgent  a  need  of 
unity  in  politics  that  they  declared  a  sort  of  Treuga 
Dei  in  religion,  and  that  truce,  armed  though  it 
was,  left  its  imprint  upon  the  First  Amendment  to 
the  Constitution.  But  immediately  the  young  Re 
public  emerged  from  the  stresses  of  adolescence,  a 
missionary  army  took  to  the  field  again,  and  before 
long  the  Asbury  revival  was  paling  that  of  White- 
field,  Wesley  and  Jonathan  Edwards,  not  only  in 
its  hortatory  violence  but  also  in  the  length  of  its 
lists  of  slain. 

Thereafter,  down  to  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil 
War,  the  country  was  rocked  again  and  again  by 
furious  attacks  upon  the  devil.  On  the  one  hand, 
this  great  campaign  took  a  purely  theological  form, 


228  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

with  a  hundred  new  and  fantastic  creeds  as  its 
fruits;  on  the  other  hand,  it  crystallized  into  the 
hysterical  temperance  movement  of  the  30's  and 
40's,  which  penetrated  to  the  very  floor  of  Congress 
and  put  "dry"  laws  upon  the  statute-books  of  ten 
States;  and  on  the  third  hand,  as  it  were,  it  es 
tablished  a  prudery  in  speech  and  thought  from 
which  we  are  yet  but  half  delivered.  Such  ancient 
and  innocent  words  as  "bitch"  and  "bastard"  dis 
appeared  from  the  American  language;  Bartlett 
tells  us,  indeed,  in  his  "Dictionary  of  American 
isms,"  *  that  even  "bull"  was  softened  to  "male 
cow."  This  was  the  Golden  Age  of  euphemism, 
as  it  was  of  euphuism;  the  worst  inventions  of  the 
English  mid-Victorians  were  adopted  and  improved. 
The  word  "woman"  became  a  term  of  opprobrium, 
verging  close  upon  downright  libel;  legs  became 
the  inimitable  "limbs";  the  stomach  began  to  run 
from  the  "bosom"  to  the  pelvic  arch;  pantaloons 
faded  into  "unmentionables";  the  newspapers  spun 
their  parts  of  speech  into  such  gossamer  webs  as  "a 
statutory  offence,"  "a  house  of  questionable  repute" 
and  "an  interesting  condition."  And  meanwhile 
the  Good  Templars  and  Sons  of  Temperance 
swarmed  in  the  land  like  a  plague  of  celestial 
locusts.  There  was  not  a  hamlet  without  its  uni- 
i  Second  edition ;  Boston,  Little,  Brown  &  Co.,  1859,  xxvi. 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     229 

formed  phalanx,  its  affecting  exhibit  of  reformed 
drunkards.  The  Kentucky  Legislature  succumbed 
to  a  travelling  recruiting  officer,  and  two-thirds  of 
the  members  signed  the  pledge.  The  National 
House  of  Representatives  took  recess  after  recess  to 
hear  eminent  excoriators  of  the  Rum  Demon,  and 
more  than  a  dozen  of  its  members  forsook  their 
duties  to  carry  the  new  gospel  to  the  bucolic  heathen 
— the  vanguard,  one  may  note  in  passing,  of  the 
innumerable  Chautauquan  caravan  of  later  years. 
Beneath  all  this  bubbling  on  the  surface,  of 
course,  ran  the  deep  and  swift  undercurrent  of  anti- 
slavery  feeling — a  tide  of  passion  which  historians 
now  attempt  to  account  for  on  economic  grounds, 
but  which  showed  no  trace  of  economic  origin  while 
it  lasted.  Its  true  quality  was  moral,  devout, 
ecstatic;  it  culminated,  to  change  the  figure,  in  a 
supreme  discharge  of  moral  electricity,  almost  fa 
tal  to  the  nation.  The  crack  of  that  great  spark 
emptied  the  jar;  the  American  people  forgot  all 
about  their  pledges  and  pruderies  during  the  four 
years  of  Civil  War.  The  Good  Templars,  indeed, 
were  never  heard  of  again,  and  with  them  into 
memory  went  many  other  singular  virtuosi  of  vir 
tue — for  example,  the  Millerites.  But  almost  be 
fore  the  last  smoke  of  battle  cleared  away,  a  re 
naissance  of  Puritan  ardour  began,  and  by  the  mid- 


230  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

die  of  the  70's  it  was  in  full  flower.  Its  high  points 
and  flashing  lighthouses  halt  the  backward-looking 
eye;  the  Moody  and  Sankey  uproar,  the  triumphal 
entry  of  the  Salvation  Army,  the  recrudescence  of 
the  temperance  agitation  and  its  culmination  in  pro 
hibition,  the  rise  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  As 
sociation  and  of  the  Sunday-school,  the  almost 
miraculous  growth  of  the  Christian  Endeavour 
movement,  the  beginnings  of  the  vice  crusade,  the 
renewed  injection  of  moral  conceptions  and  rages 
into  party  politics  (the  "crime"  of  1873!),  the 
furious  preaching  of  baroque  Utopias,  the  inven 
tion  of  muckraking,  the  mad,  glad  war  of  exter 
mination  upon  the  Mormons,  the  hysteria  over  the 
Breckenridge-Pollard  case  and  other  like  causes, 
the  enormous  multiplication  of  moral  and  religious 
associations,  the  spread  of  zoophilia,  the  attack 
upon  Mammon,  the  dawn  of  the  uplift,  and  last  but 
far  from  least,  comstockery. 

In  comstockery,  if  I  do  not  err,  the  new  Puritan 
ism  gave  a  sign  of  its  formal  departure  from  the 
old,  and  moral  endeavour  suffered  a  general  over 
hauling  and  tightening  of  the  screws.  The  differ 
ence  between  the  two  forms  is  very  well  represented 
by  the  difference  between  the  program  of  the  half- 
forgotten  Good  Templars  and  the  program  set  forth 
in  the  Webb  Law  of  1913,  or  by  that  between  the 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     231 

somewhat  diffident  prudery  of  the  40's  and  the  as- 
toundingly  ferocious  and  uncompromising  vice- 
crusading  of  today.  In  brief,  a  difference  between 
the  renunciation  and  denunciation,  asceticism  and 
Mohammedanism,  the  hair  shirt  and  the  flaming 
sword.  The  distinguishing  mark  of  the  elder 
Puritanism,  at  least  after  it  had  attained  to  the 
stature  of  a  national  philosophy,  was  its  appeal  to 
the  individual  conscience,  its  exclusive  concern 
with  the  elect,  its  strong  flavour  of  self -accusing. 
Even  the  rage  against  slavery  was,  in  large  meas 
ure,  an  emotion  of  the  mourners'  bench.  The 
thing  that  worried  the  more  ecstatic  Abolitionists 
was  their  sneaking  sense  of  responsibility,  the  fear 
that  they  themselves  were  flouting  the  fire  by  letting 
slavery  go  on.  The  thirst  to  punish  the  concrete 
slave-owner,  as  an  end  in  itself,  did  not  appear 
until  opposition  had  added  exasperation  to  fervour. 
In  most  of  the  earlier  harangues  against  his  prac 
tice,  indeed,  you  will  find  a  perfect  willingness  to 
grant  that  slave-owner's  good  faith,  and  even  to 
compensate  him  for  his  property.  But  the  new 
Puritanism — or,  perhaps  more  accurately,  consider 
ing  the  shades  of  prefixes,  the  neo-Puritanism — is 
a  frank  harking  back  to  the  primitive  spirit.  The 
original  Puritan  of  the  bleak  New  England  coast 
was  not  content  to  flay  his  own  wayward  carcass: 


232  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

full  satisfaction  did  not  sit  upon  him  until  he  had 
jailed  a  Quaker.  That  is  to  say,  the  sinner  who 
excited  his  highest  zeal  and  passion  was  not  so  much 
himself  as  his  neighbour;  to  borrow  a  term  from 
psychopathology,  he  was  less  the  masochist  than  the 
sadist.  And  it  is  that  very  peculiarity  which  sets 
off  his  descendant  of  today  from  the  ameliorated 
Puritan  of  the  era  between  the  Revolution  and  the 
Civil  War.  The  new  Puritanism  is  not  ascetic,  but 
militant.  Its  aim  is  not  to  lift  up  saints  but  to 
knock  down  sinners.  Its  supreme  manifestation 
is  the  vice  crusade,  an  armed  pursuit  of  helpless 
outcasts  by  the  whole  military  and  naval  forces  of 
the  Republic.  Its  supreme  hero  is  Comstock  Him 
self,  with  his  pious  boast  that  the  sinners  he  jailed 
during  his  astounding  career,  if  gathered  into  one 
penitential  party,  would  have  filled  a  train  of 
sixty-one  coaches,  allowing  sixty  to  the  coach. 

So  much  for  the  general  trend  and  tenor  of  the 
movement.  At  the  bottom  of  it,  it  is  plain,  there 
lies  that  insistent  presentation  of  the  idea  of  sin, 
that  enchantment  by  concepts  of  carnality,  which 
has  engaged  a  certain  type  of  man,  to  the  exclusion 
of  all  other  notions,  since  the  dawn  of  history. 
The  remote  ancestors  of  our  Puritan-Philistines  of 
today  are  to  be  met  with  in  the  Old  Testament  and 
the  New,  and  their  nearer  grandfathers  clamoured 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     233 

against  the  snares  of  the  flesh  in  all  the  councils  of 
the  Early  Church.  Not  only  Western  Christianity 
has  had  to  reckon  with  them:  they  have  brothers 
today  among  the  Mohammedan  Sufi  and  in  obscure 
Buddhist  sects,  and  they  were  the  chief  preachers 
of  the  Russian  Raskol,  or  Reformation.  "The 
Ironsides  of  Cromwell  and  the  Puritans  of  New 
England,"  says  Heard,  in  his  book  on  the  Russian 
church,  "bear  a  strong  resemblance  to  the  Old  Be 
lievers."  But  here,  in  the  main,  we  have  asceti 
cism  more  than  Puritanism,  as  it  is  now  visible;  here 
the  sinner  combated  is  chiefly  the  one  within.  How 
are  we  to  account  for  the  wholesale  transvaluation 
of  values  that  came  after  the  Civil  War,  the  transfer 
of  ire  from  the  Old  Adam  to  the  happy  rascal  across 
the  street,  the  sinister  rise  of  a  new  Inquisition  in 
the  midst  of  a  growing  luxury  that  even  the  Puritans 
themselves  succumbed  to?  The  answer  is  to  be 
sought,  it  seems  to  me,  in  the  direction  of  the  Golden 
Calf — in  the  direction  of  the  fat  fields  of  our  Mid 
lands,  the  full  nets  of  our  lakes  and  coasts,  the  fac 
tory  smoke  of  our  cities — even  in  the  direction  of 
Wall  Street,  that  devil's  chasm.  In  brief,  Puritan 
ism  has  become  bellicose  and  tyrannical  by  becom 
ing  rich.  The  will  to  power  has  been  aroused  to 
a  high  flame  by  an  increase  in  the  available  draught 
and  fuel,  as  militarism  is  engendered  and  nour- 


234  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

ished  by  the  presence  of  men  and  materials. 
Wealth,  discovering  its  power,  has  reached  out  its 
long  arms  to  grab  the  distant  and  innumerable  sin 
ner;  it  has  gone  down  into  its  deep  pockets  to  pay 
for  his  costly  pursuit  and  flaying;  it  has  created 
the  Puritan  entrepreneur,  the  daring  and  imagina 
tive  organizer  of  Puritanism,  the  baron  of  moral 
endeavour,  the  invincible  prophet  of  new  austeri 
ties.  And,  by  the  same  token,  it  has  issued  its  let 
ters  of  marque  to  the  Puritan  mercenary,  the  pro 
fessional  hound  of  heaven,  the  moral  Junker,  the 
Comstock,  and  out  of  his  skill  at  his  trade  there 
has  arisen  the  whole  machinery,  so  complicated 
and  so  effective,  of  the  new  Holy  Office. 

Poverty  is  a  soft  pedal  upon  all  branches  of  hu 
man  activity,  not  excepting  the  spiritual,  and  even 
the  original  Puritans,  for  all  their  fire,  felt  its 
throttling  caress.  I  think  it  is  Bill  Nye  who  has 
humorously  pictured  their  arduous  life:  how  they 
had  to  dig  clams  all  winter  that  they  would  have 
strength  enough  to  plant  corn,  and  how  they  had  to 
hoe  corn  all  summer  that  they  would  have  strength 
enough  to  dig  clams.  That  low  ebb  of  fortune 
worked  against  the  full  satisfaction  of  their  zeal 
in  two  distinct  ways.  On  the  one  hand,  it  kept 
them  but  ill-prepared  for  the  cost  of  offensive  en 
terprise:  even  their  occasional  missionarying  raids 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     235 

upon  the  Indians  took  too  much  productive  energy 
from  their  business  with  the  corn  and  the  clams. 
And  on  the  other  hand,  it  kept  a  certain  restrain 
ing  humility  in  their  hearts,  so  that  for  eveiy 
Quaker  they  hanged,  they  let  a  dozen  go.  Poverty, 
of  course,  is  no  discredit,  but  at  all  events,  it  is  a 
subtle  criticism.  The  man  oppressed  by  material 
wants  is  not  in  the  best  of  moods  for  the  more  am 
bitious  forms  of  moral  adventure.  He  not  only 
lacks  the  means;  he  is  also  deficient  in  the  self- 
assurance,  the  sense  of  superiority,  the  secure  and 
lofty  point  of  departure.  If  he  is  haunted  by  no 
tions  of  the  sinfulness  of  his  neighbours,  he  is  apt 
to  see  some  of  its  worst  manifestations  within  him 
self,  and  that  disquieting  discovery  will  tend  to 
take  his  thoughts  from  the  other  fellow.  It  is  by 
no  arbitrary  fiat,  indeed,  that  the  brothers  of  all 
the  expiatory  orders  are  vowed  to  poverty.  His 
tory  teaches  us  that  wealth,  whenever  it  has  come 
to  them  by  chance,  has  put  an  end  to  their  soul- 
searching.  The  Puritans  of  the  elder  generations, 
with  few  exceptions,  were  poor.  Nearly  all  Amer 
icans,  down  to  the  Civil  War,  were  poor.  And  be 
ing  poor,  they  subscribed  to  a  Sklavenmoral. 
That  is  to  say,  they  were  spiritually  humble.  Their 
eyes  were  fixed,  not  upon  the  abyss  below  them, 
but  upon  the  long  and  rocky  road  ahead  of  them. 


236  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

Their  moral  passion  spent  most  of  its  force 
in  self-accusing,  self-denial  and  self-scourging. 
They  began  by  howling  their  sins  from  the  mourn 
ers'  bench;  they  came  to  their  end,  many  of  them, 
in  the  supreme  immolation  of  battle. 

But  out  of  the  War  came  prosperity,  and  out  of 
prosperity  came  a  new  morality,  to  wit,  the  Her- 
renmoral.  Many  great  fortunes  were  made  in  the 
War  itself;  an  uncountable  number  got  started  dur 
ing  the  two  decades  following.  What  is  more,  this 
material  prosperity  was  generally  dispersed  through 
all  classes:  it  affected  the  common  workman  and 
the  remote  farmer  quite  as  much  as  the  actual  mer 
chant  and  manufacturer.  Its  first  effect,  as  we  all 
know,  was  a  universal  cockiness,  a  rise  in  preten 
sions,  a  comforting  feeling  that  the  Republic  was 
a  success,  and  with  it,  its  every  citizen.  This 
change  made  itself  quickly  obvious,  and  even 
odious,  in  all  the  secular  relations  of  life.  The 
American  became  a  sort  of  braggart  playboy  of  the 
western  world,  enormously  sure  of  himself  and 
ludicrously  contemptuous  of  all  other  men.  And 
on  the  ghostly  side  there  appeared  the  same  acces 
sion  of  confidence,  the  same  sure  assumption  of  au 
thority,  though  at  first  less  self -evidently  and  of 
fensively.  The  religion  of  the  American  thus 
began  to  lose  its  inward  direction;  it  became  less 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     237 

and  less  a  scheme  of  personal  salvation  and  more 
and  more  a  scheme  of  pious  derring-do.  The  re 
vivals  of  the  70's  had  all  the  bounce  and  fervour 
of  those  of  half  a  century  before,  but  the  mourners' 
bench  began  to  lose  its  standing  as  their  symbol, 
and  in  its  place  appeared  the  collection  basket. 
Instead  of  accusing  himself,  the  convert  volunteered 
to  track  down  and  bring  in  the  other  fellow.  His 
enthusiasm  was  not  for  repentance,  but  for  what  he 
began  to  call  service.  In  brief,  the  national  sense 
of  energy  and  fitness  gradually  superimposed  itself 
upon  the  national  Puritanism,  and  from  that  mar 
riage  sprung  a  keen  Wille  zur  Macht,  a  lusty  will 
to  power.1  The  American  Puritan,  by  now,  was 
not  content  with  the  rescue  of  his  own  soul;  he  felt 
an  irresistible  impulse  to  hand  salvation  on,  to  dis 
perse  and  multiply  it,  to  ram  it  down  reluctant 
throats,  to  make  it  free,  universal  and  compulsory. 
He  had  the  men,  he  had  the  guns  and  he  had  the 
money  too.  All  that  was  needed  was  organization. 
The  rescue  of  the  unsaved  could  be  converted  into 
a  wholesale  business,  unsentimentally  and  economi 
cally  conducted,  and  with  all  the  usual  aids  to 
efficiency,  from  skilful  sales  management  to  se- 

i  Cf.  The  Puritan,  by  Owen  Hatteras,  The  Smart  Set,  July, 
1916;  and  The  Puritan's  Will  to  Power,  by  Randolph  S. 
Bourne,  The  Seven  Arts,  April,  1917. 


238  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

ductive  advertising,  and  from  rigorous  accounting 
to  the  diligent  shutting  off  of  competition. 

Out  of  that  new  will  to  power  came  many  en 
terprises  more  or  less  futile  and  harmless,  with  the 
'"institutional"  church  at  their  head.  Piety  was 
cunningly  disguised  as  basketball,  billiards  and 
squash;  the  sinner  was  lured  to  grace  with  Turkish 
baths,  lectures  on  foreign  travel,  and  free  instruc 
tions  in  stenography,  rhetoric  and  double-entry 
book-keeping.  Religion  lost  all  its  old  contempla 
tive  and  esoteric  character,  and  became  a  frankly 
worldly  enterprise,  a  thing  of  balance-sheets  and 
ponderable  profits,  heavily  capitalized  and  astutely 
manned.  There  was  no  longer  any  room  for  the 
spiritual  type  of  leader,  with  his  white  choker  and 
his  interminable  fourthlies.  He  was  displaced  by 
a  brisk  gentleman  in  a  "business  suit"  who  looked, 
talked  and  thought  like  a  seller  of  Mexican  mine 
stock.  Scheme  after  scheme  for  the  swift  evangeli 
zation  of  the  nation  was  launched,  some  of  them  of 
truly  astonishing  sweep  and  daring.  They  kept 
pace,  step  by  step,  with  the  mushroom  growth  of 
enterprise  in  the  commercial  field.  The  Y.  M.  C. 
A.  swelled  to  the  proportions  of  a  Standard  Oil 
Company,  a  United  States  Steel  Corporation.  Its 
hugh  buildings  began  to  rise  in  every  city;  it  de 
veloped  a  swarm  of  specialists  in  new  and  fantastic 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     239 

moral  and  social  sciences;  it  enlisted  the  same  gar 
gantuan  talent  which  managed  the  railroads,  the 
big  banks  and  the  larger  national  industries.  And 
beside  it  rose  the  Young  People's  Society  of  Chris 
tian  Endeavour,  the  Sunday-school  associations  and 
a  score  of  other  such  grandiose  organizations, 
each  with  its  seductive  baits  for  recruits  and 
money.  Even  the  enterprises  that  had  come  down 
from  an  elder  and  less  expansive  day  were  pumped 
up  and  put  on  a  Wall  Street  basis:  the  American 
Bible  Society,  for  example,  began  to  give  away 
Bibles  by  the  million  instead  of  by  the  thousand, 
and  the  venerable  Tract  Society  took  on  the  fever 
ish  ardour  of  a  daily  newspaper,  even  of  a  yellow 
journal.  Down  into  our  own  day  this  trustifica 
tion  of  pious  endeavour  has  gone  on.  The  Men 
and  Religion  Forward  Movement  proposed  to  con 
vert  the  whole  country  by  12  o'clock  noon  of  such 
and  such  a  day;  the  Order  of  Gideons  plans  to  make 
every  traveller  read  the  Bible  (American  Revised 
Version!)  whether  he  will  or  not;  in  a  score  of 
cities  there  are  committees  of  opulent  devotees  who 
take  half-pages  in  the  newspapers,  and  advertise 
the  Decalogue  and  the  Beatitudes  as  if  they  were 
commodities  of  trade. 

Thus  the  national  energy  which  created  the  Beef 
Trust  and  the  Oil  Trust  achieved  equal  marvels  in 


240  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

the  field  of  religious  organization  and  by  exactly 
the  same  methods.  One  needs  be  no  psychologist 
to  perceive  in  all  this  a  good  deal  less  actual  re 
ligious  zeal  than  mere  lust  for  staggering  accom 
plishment,  for  empty  bigness,  for  the  unprece 
dented  and  the  prodigious.  Many  of  these  great 
religious  enterprises,  indeed,  soon  lost  all  save  the 
faintest  flavour  of  devotion — for  example,  the  Y. 
M.  C.  A.,  which  is  now  no  more  than  a  sort  of 
national  club  system,  with  its  doors  open  to  any  one 
not  palpably  felonious.  (I  have  drunk  cocktails  in 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  lamaseries,  and  helped  fallen  lamas  to 
bed.)  But  while  the  war  upon  godlessness  thus 
degenerated  into  a  secular  sport  in  one  direction,  it 
maintained  all  its  pristine  quality,  and  even  took  on 
a  new  ferocity  in  another  direction.  Here  it  was 
that  the  lamp  of  American  Puritanism  kept  on 
burning;  here,  it  was,  indeed,  that  the  lamp  be 
came  converted  into  a  huge  bonfire,  or  rather  a 
blast-furnace,  with  flames  mounting  to  the  very 
heavens,  and  sinners  stacked  like  cordwood  at  the 
hand  of  an  eager  black  gang.  In  brief,  the  new 
will  to  power,  working  in  the  true  Puritan  as  in  the 
mere  religious  sportsman,  stimulated  him  to  a  cam 
paign  of  repression  and  punishment  perhaps  un 
equalled  in  the  history  of  the  world,  and  developed 
an  art  of  militant  morality  as  complex  in  technique 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     241 

and    as    rich    in   professors   as   the   elder   art   of 
iniquity. 

If  we  take  the  passage  of  the  Comstock  Postal 
Act,  on  March  3,  1873,  as  a  starting  point,  the  legis 
lative  stakes  of  this  new  Puritan  movement  sweep 
upward  in  a  grand  curve  to  the  passage  of  the  Mann 
and  Webb  Acts,  in  1910  and  1913,  the  first  of 
which  ratifies  the  Seventh  Commandment  with  a 
salvo  of  artillery,  and  the  second  of  which  put  the 
overwhelming  power  of  the  Federal  Government 
behind  the  enforcement  of  the  prohibition  laws  in 
the  so-called  "dry"  States.  The  mind  at  once  re 
calls  the  salient  campaigns  of  this  war  of  a  gener 
ation:  first  the  attack  upon  "vicious"  literature,  be 
gun  by  Comstock  and  the  New  York  Society  for  the 
Suppression  of  Vice,  but  quickly  extending  to  every 
city  in  the  land;  then  the  long  fight  upon  the  open 
gambling  house,  culminating  in  its  practical  dis 
appearance;  then  the  recrudesence  of  prohibition, 
abandoned  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War,  and 
the  attempt  to  enforce  it  in  a  rapidly  growing  list  of 
States;  then  the  successful  onslaught  upon  the 
Louisiana  lottery,  and  upon  its  swarm  of  rivals  and 
successors;  then  the  gradual  stamping-out  of  horse- 
racing,  until  finally  but  two  or  three  States  per 
mitted  it,  and  the  consequent  attack  upon  the  pool 
room;  then  the  rise  of  a  theatre-censorship  in  most 


242  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

of  the  large  cities,  and  of  a  moving  picture  censor 
ship  following  it;  then  the  revival  of  Sabbata 
rianism,  with  the  Lord's  Day  Alliance,  a  Canadian 
invention,  in  the  van;  then  the  gradual  tightening 
of  the  laws  against  sexual  irregularity,  with  the 
unenforceable  New  York  Adultery  Act  as  a  typical 
product;  and  lastly,  the  general  ploughing  up  and 
emotional  discussion  of  sexual  matters,  with  com 
pulsory  instruction  in  "sex  hygiene"  as  its  mildest 
manifestation  and  the  mediaeval  fury  of  the  vice 
crusade  as  its  worst.  Differing  widely  in  their  tar 
gets,  these  various  Puritan  enterprises  had  one 
character  in  common:  they  were  all  efforts  to  com 
bat  immorality  with  the  weapons  designed  for 
crime.  In  each  of  them  there  was  a  visible  effort 
to  erect  the  individual's  offence  against  himself  into 
an  offence  against  society.  Beneath  all  of  them 
there  was  the  dubious  principle — the  very  deter 
mining  principle,  indeed,  of  Puritanism — that  it  is 
competent  for  the  community  to  limit  and  condition 
the  private  acts  of  its  members,  and  with  it  the  in 
evitable  corollary  that  there  are  some  members  of 
the  community  who  have  a  special  talent  for  such 
legislation,  and  that  their  arbitrary  fiats  are,  and  of 
a  right  ought  to  be,  binding  upon  all. 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     243 


§4 

This  is  the  essential  fact  of  the  new  Puritanism; 
its  recognition  of  the  moral  expert,  the  professional 
sinhound,  the  virtuoso  of  virtue.  Under  the  orig 
inal  Puritan  theocracy,  as  in  Scotland,  for  example, 
the  chase  and  punishment  of  sinners  was  a  purely 
ecclesiastical  function,  and  during  the  slow  dis 
integration  of  the  theocracy  the  only  change  intro 
duced  was  the  extension  of  that  function  to  lay 
helpers,  and  finally  to  the  whole  body  of  laymen. 
This  change,  however,  did  not  materially  corrupt 
the  ecclesiastical  quality  of  the  enterprise:  the 
leader  in  the  so-called  militant  field  still  remained 
the  same  man  who  led  in  the  spiritual  field.  But 
with  the  capitalization  of  Puritan  effort  there  came 
a  radical  overhauling  of  method.  The  secular 
arm,  as  it  were,  conquered  as  it  helped.  That  is  to 
say,  the  special  business  of  forcing  sinners  to  be 
good  was  taken  away  from  the  preachers  and  put 
into  the  hands  of  laymen  trained  in  its  technique 
and  mystery,  and  there  it  remains.  The  new 
Puritanism  has  created  an  army  of  gladiators  wrho 
are  not  only  distinct  from  the  hierarchy,  but  who, 
in  many  instances,  actually  command  and  intimi 
date  the  hierarchy.  This  is  conspicuously  evident 


244  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

in  the  case  of  the  Anti-Saloon  League,  an  enor 
mously  effective  fighting  organization,  with  a  large 
staff  of  highly  accomplished  experts  in  its  serv 
ice.  These  experts  do  not  wait  for  ecclesiastical 
support,  nor  even  ask  for  it;  they  force  it.  The 
clergyman  who  presumes  to  protest  against  their 
war  upon  the  saloon,  even  upon  the  quite  virtuous 
ground  that  it  is  not  effective  enough,  runs  a  risk  of 
condign  and  merciless  punishment.  So  plainly  is 
this  understood,  indeed,  that  in  more  than  one  State 
the  clergy  of  the  Puritan  denominations  openly 
take  orders  from  these  specialists  in  excoriation, 
and  court  their  favour  without  shame.  Here  a 
single  moral  enterprise,  heavily  capitalized  and 
carefully  officered,  has  engulfed  the  entire  Puritan 
movement,  and  a  part  has  become  more  than  the 
whole.1 

In  a  dozen  other  directions  this  tendency  to  trans 
form  a  religious  business  into  a  purely  secular 
business,  with  lay  backers  and  lay  officers,  is  plainly 
visible.  The  increasing  wealth  of  Puritanism  has 
not  only  augmented  its  scope  and  its  daring,  but  it 
has  also  had  the  effect  of  attracting  clever  men,  of 

i  An  instructive  account  of  the  organization  and  methods  of 
the  Anti-Saloon  League,  a  thoroughly  typical  Puritan  engine, 
is  to  be  found  in  Alcohol  and  Society,  by  John  Koren;  New 
York,  Henry  Holt  &  Co.,  1916. 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     245 

no  particular  spiritual  enthusiasm,  to  its  service. 
Moral  endeavour,  in  brief,  has  become  a  recognized 
trade,  or  rather  a  profession,  and  there  have  ap 
peared  men  who  pretend  to  a  special  and  enormous 
knowledge  of  it,  and  who  show  enough  truth  in  their 
pretension  to  gain  the  unlimited  support  of  Puritan 
capitalists.  The  vice  crusade,  to  mention  one  ex 
ample,  has  produced  a  large  crop  of  such  self -con 
stituted  experts,  and  some  of  them  are  in  such  de 
mand  that  they  are  overwhelmed  with  engage 
ments.  The  majority  of  these  men  have  wholly  lost 
the  flavour  of  sacerdotalism.  They  are  not  pas 
tors,  but  detectives,  statisticians  and  mob  orators, 
and  not  infrequently  their  secularity  becomes  dis 
tressingly  evident.  Their  aim,  as  they  say,  is  to  do 
things.  Assuming  that  "moral  sentiment"  is  be 
hind  them,  they  override  all  criticism  and  opposi 
tion  without  argument,  and  proceed  to  the  business 
of  dispersing  prostitutes,  of  browbeating  and  ter 
rorizing  weak  officials,  and  of  forcing  legislation  of 
their  own  invention  through  City  Councils  and  State 
Legislatures.  Their  very  cocksureness  is  their 
chief  source  of  strength.  They  combat  objection 
with  such  violence  and  with  such  a  devastating 
cynicism  that  it  quickly  fades  away.  The  more 
astute  politicians,  in  the  face  of  so  ruthless  a  fire, 
commonly  profess  conversion  and  join  the  colours, 


246  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

just  as  their  brethren  went  over  to  prohibition  in  the 
"dry"  States,  and  the  newspapers  seldom  hold  out 
much  longer.  The  result  is  that  the  "investigation" 
of  the  social  evil  becomes  an  orgy,  and  that  the 
ensuing  "report"  of  the  inevitable  "vice  commis 
sion"  is  made  up  of  two  parts  sensational  fiction 
and  three  parts  platitude.  Of  all  the  vice  commis 
sions  that  have  sat  of  late  in  the  United  States,  not 
one  has  done  its  work  without  the  aid  of  these  sin 
gularly  confident  experts,  and  not  one  has  con 
tributed  an  original  and  sagacious  idea,  nor  even  an 
idea  of  ordinary  common  sense,  to  the  solution  of 
the  problem. 

I  need  not  go  on  piling  up  examples  of  this  new 
form  of  Puritan  activity,  with  its  definite  departure 
from  a  religious  foundation  and  its  elaborate  de 
velopment  as  an  everyday  business.  The  impulse 
behind  it  I  have  called  a  Wille  zur  Macht,  a  will  to 
power.  In  terms  more  homely,  it  was  described 
by  John  Fiske  as  "the  disposition  to  domineer,"  and 
in  his  usual  unerring  way,  he  saw  its  dependence  on 
the  gratuitous  assumption  of  infallibility.  But 
even  stronger  than  the  Puritan's  belief  in  his  own 
inspiration  is  his  yearning  to  make  some  one  jump. 
In  other  words,  he  has  an  ineradicable  liking  for 
cruelty  in  him:  he  is  a  sportsman  even  before  he  is 
a  moralist,  and  very  often  his  blood-lust  leads  him 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     247 

into  lamentable  excesses.  The  various  vice  cru 
sades  afford  innumerable  cases  in  point.  In  one 
city,  if  the  press  dispatches  are  to  be  believed,  the 
proscribed  women  of  the  Tenderloin  were  pursued 
with  such  ferocity  that  seven  of  them  were  driven  to 
suicide.  And  in  another  city,  after  a  campaign  of 
repression  so  unfortunate  in  its  effects  that  there 
were  actually  protests  against  it  by  clergymen  else 
where,  a  distinguished  (and  very  friendly)  con 
noisseur  of  such  affairs  referred  to  it  ingenuously 
as  more  fun  "than  a  fleet  of  aeroplanes."  Such 
disorderly  combats  with  evil,  of  course,  produce  no 
permanent  good.  It  is  a  commonplace,  indeed, 
that  a  city  is  usually  in  worse  condition  after  it  has 
been  "cleaned  up"  than  it  was  before,  and  I  need 
not  point  to  New  York,  Los  Angeles  and  Des  Moines 
for  the  evidence  as  to  the  social  evil,  and  to  any 
large  city,  East,  West,  North,  South,  for  the  evi 
dence  as  to  the  saloon.  But  the  Puritans 
who  finance  such  enterprises  get  their  thrills,  not 
out  of  any  possible  obliteration  of  vice,  but  out  of 
the  galloping  pursuit  of  the  vicious.  The  new 
Puritan  gives  no  more  serious  thought  to  the  rights 
and  feelings  of  his  quarry  than  the  gunner  gives  to 
the  rights  and  feelings  of  his  birds.  From  the 
beginning  of  the  prohibition  campaign,  for  ex 
ample,  the  principle  of  compensation  has  been  vio- 


248  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

lently  opposed,  despite  its  obvious  justice,  and  a 
complaisant  judiciary  has  ratified  the  Puritan  posi 
tion.  In  England  and  on  the  Continent  that  prin 
ciple  is  safeguarded  by  the  fundamental  laws,  and 
during  the  early  days  of  the  anti-slavery  agitation 
in  this  country  it  was  accepted  as  incontrovertible, 
but  if  any  American  statesman  were  to  propose 
today  that  it  be  applied  to  the  license-holder  whose 
lawful  franchise  has  been  taken  away  from  him 
arbitrarily,  or  to  the  brewer  or  distiller  whose 
costly  plant  has  been  rendered  useless  and  value 
less,  he  would  see  the  days  of  his  statesmanship 
brought  to  a  quick  and  violent  close. 

But  does  all  this  argue  a  total  lack  of  justice  in 
the  American  character,  or  even  a  lack  of  common 
decency?  I  doubt  that  it  would  be  well  to  go  so 
far  in  accusation.  What  it  does  argue  is  a  tend 
ency  to  put  moral  considerations  above  all  other 
considerations,  and  to  define  morality  in  the  narrow 
Puritan  sense.  The  American,  in  other  words, 
thinks  that  the  sinner  has  no  rights  that  any  one  is 
bound  to  respect,  and  he  is  prone  to  mistake  an 
unsupported  charge  of  sinning,  provided  it  be  made 
violently  enough,  for  actual  proof  and  confession. 
What  is  more,  he  takes  an  intense  joy  in  the  mere 
chase:  he  has  the  true  Puritan  taste  for  an  auto  da 
fe  in  him.  "I  am  ag'inst  capital  punishment," 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     249 

said  Mr.  Dooley,  "but  we  won't  get  rid  av  it  so  long 
as  the  people  enjie  it  so  much."  But  though  he  is 
thus  an  eager  spectator,  and  may  even  be  lured  into 
taking  part  in  the  pursuit,  the  average  American 
is  not  disposed  to  initiate  it,  nor  to  pay  for  it.  The 
larger  Puritan  enterprises  of  today  are  not  popular 
in  the  sense  of  originating  in  the  bleachers,  but  only 
in  the  sense  of  being  applauded  from  the  bleachers. 
The  burdens  of  the  fray,  both  of  toil  and  of  expense, 
are  always  upon  a  relatively  small  number  of  men. 
In  a  State  rocked  and  racked  by  a  war  upon  the 
saloon,  it  was  recently  shown,  for  example,  that  but 
five  per  cent,  of  the  members  of  the  Puritan  de 
nominations  contributed  to  the  war-chest.  And 
yet  the  Anti-Saloon  League  of  that  State  was  so 
sure  of  support  from  below  that  it  presumed  to 
stand  as  the  spokesman  of  the  whole  Christian  com 
munity,  and  even  ventured  to  launch  excommuni 
cations  upon  contumacious  Christians,  both  lay  and 
clerical,  who  objected  to  its  methods.  Moreover, 
the  great  majority  of  the  persons  included  in  the 
contributing  five  per  cent,  gave  no  more  than  a  few 
cents  a  year.  The  whole  support  of  the  League  de 
volved  upon  a  dozen  men,  all  of  them  rich  and  all 
of  them  Puritans  of  purest  ray  serene.  These  men 
supported  a  costly  organization  for  their  private 
entertainment  and  stimulation.  It  was  their  means 


250  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

of  recreation,  their  sporting  club.  They  were  will 
ing  to  spend  a  lot  of  money  to  procure  good  sport 
for  themselves — i.e.,  to  procure  the  best  crusading 
talent  available — and  they  were  so  successful  in 
that  endeavour  that  they  enchanted  the  populace 
too,  and  so  shook  the  State. 

Naturally  enough,  this  organization  of  Puritan 
ism  upon  a  business  and  sporting  basis  has  had  a 
tendency  to  attract  and  create  a  type  of  "expert" 
crusader  whose  determination  to  give  his  em 
ployers  a  good  show  is  uncontaminated  by  any  con 
sideration  for  the  public  welfare.  The  result  has 
been  a  steady  increase  of  scandals,  a  constant  col 
lapse  of  moral  organizations,  a  frequent  unveiling 
of  whited  sepulchres.  Various  observers  have 
sought  to  direct  the  public  attention  to  this  signifi 
cant  corruption  of  the  new  Puritanism.  The  New 
York  Sun,  for  example,  in  the  course  of  a  protest 
against  the  appointment  of  a  vice  commission  for 
New  York,  has  denounced  the  paid  agents  of  pri 
vate  reform  organizations  as  "notoriously  corrupt, 
undependable  and  dishonest,"  and  the  Rev.  Dr.  W. 
S.  Rainsford,  supporting  the  charge,  has  borne  testi 
mony  out  of  his  own  wide  experience  to  their  law 
lessness,  their  absurd  pretensions  to  special  knowl 
edge,  their  habit  of  manufacturing  evidence,  and 
their  devious  methods  of  shutting  off  criticism. 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     251 

But  so  far,  at  all  events,  no  organized  war  upon 
them  has  been  undertaken,  and  they  seem  to  flour 
ish  more  luxuriantly  year  after  year.  The  indi 
vidual  whose  common  rights  are  invaded  by  such 
persons  has  little  chance  of  getting  justice,  and  less 
of  getting  redress.  When  he  attempts  to  defend 
himself  he  finds  that  he  is  opposed,  not  only  by  a 
financial  power  that  is  ample  for  all  purposes  of  the 
combat  and  that  does  not  shrink  at  intimidating 
juries,  prosecuting  officers  and  judges,  but  also  by 
a  shrewdness  which  shapes  the  laws  to  its  own  uses, 
and  takes  full  advantage  of  the  miserable  cowardice 
of  legislatures.  The  moral  gladiators,  in  brief, 
know  the  game.  They  come  before  a  legislature 
with  a  bill  ostensibly  designed  to  cure  some  great 
and  admitted  evil,  they  procure  its  enactment  by 
scarcely  veiled  insinuations  that  all  who  stand 
against  it  must  be  apologists  for  the  evil  itself,  and 
then  they  proceed  to  extend  its  aims  by  bold  infer 
ences,  and  to  dragoon  the  courts  into  ratifying  those 
inferences,  and  to  employ  it  as  a  means  of  persecu 
tion,  terrorism  and  blackmail.  The  history  of  the 
Mann  Act  offers  a  shining  example  of  this  purpose. 
It  was  carried  through  Congress,  over  the  veto  of 
President  Taft,  who  discerned  its  extravagance,  on 
the  plea  that  it  was  needed  to  put  down  the  traffic 
in  prostitutes ;  it  is  enforced  today  against  men  who 


252  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

are  no  more  engaged  in  the  traffic  in  prostitutes  than 
you  or  I.  Naturally  enough,  the  effect  of  this  ex 
tension  of  its  purposes,  against  which  its  author  has 
publicly  protested,  has  been  to  make  it  a  truly 
deadly  weapon  in  the  hands  of  professional  Puri 
tans  and  of  denouncers  of  delinquency  even  less 
honest.  "Blackmailers  of  both  sexes  have  arisen," 
says  Mr.  Justice  McKenna,  "using  the  terrors  of 
the  construction  now  sanctioned  by  the  [Supreme] 
Court  as  a  help — indeed,  the  means — for  their 
brigandage.  The  result  is  grave  and  should  give 
us  pause."  1 

But  that  is  as  far  as  objection  has  yet  gone;  the 
majority  of  the  learned  jurist's  colleagues  swal 
lowed  both  the  statute  and  its  consequences.2 
There  is,  indeed,  no  sign  as  yet  of  any  organized 
war  upon  the  alliance  between  the  blackmailing 
Puritan  and  the  pseudo-Puritan  blackmailer.  It 
must  wait  until  a  sense  of  reason  and  justice  shows 
itself  in  the  American  people,  strong  enough 
to  overcome  their  prejudice  in  favour  of  the 
moralist  on  the  one  hand,  and  their  delight  in  bar 
barous  pursuits  and  punishments  on  the  other.  I 
see  but  faint  promise  of  that  change  today. 

1  U.  S.  Rep.,  vol.  242,  No.  7,  p.  502. 

2  The  majority  opinion,  written  by  Mr.  Justice  Day,  is  given 
in  U.  S.  Rep.,  vol.  242,  no.  7,  pp.  482-496. 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     253 


§5 

I  have  gone  into  the  anatomy  and  physiology  of 
militant  Puritanism  because,  so  far  as  I  know,  the 
inquiry  has  not  been  attempted  before,  and  because 
a  somewhat  detailed  acquaintance  with  the  forces 
behind  so  grotesque  a  manifestation  as  com- 
stockery,  the  particular  business  of  the  present 
essay,  is  necessary  to  an  understanding  of  its  work 
ings,  and  of  its  prosperity,  and  of  its  influence  upon 
the  arts.  Save  one  turn  to  England  or  to  the  Brit 
ish  colonies,  it  is  impossible  to  find  a  parallel  for 
the  astounding  absolutism  of  Comstock  and  his  imi 
tators  in  any  civilized  country.  No  other  nation 
has  laws  which  oppress  the  arts  so  ignorantly  and 
so  abominably  as  ours  do,  nor  has  any  other  nation 
handed  over  the  enforcement  of  the  statutes  which 
exist  to  agencies  so  openly  pledged  to  reduce  all 
aesthetic  expression  to  the  service  of  a  stupid  and 
unworkable  scheme  of  rectitude.  I  have  before  me 
as  I  write  a  pamphlet  in  explanation  of  his  aims  and 
principles,  prepared  by  Comstock  himself  and  pre 
sented  to  me  by  his  successor.  Its  very  title  is  a 
sufficient  statement  of  the  Puritan  position: 
"MORALS,  Not  Art  or  Literature."  1  The  capi- 

iNcw  York,  (1914). 


254  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

tals  are  in  the  original.  And  within,  as  a  sort  of 
general  text,  the  idea  is  amplified:  "It  is  a  ques 
tion  of  peace,  good  order  and  morals,  and  not  art, 
literature  or  science."  Here  we  have  a  statement 
of  principle  that,  at  all  events,  is  at  least  quite 
frank.  There  is  not  the  slightest  effort  to  beg  the 
question;  there  is  no  hypocritical  pretension  to  a 
desire  to  purify  or  safeguard  the  arts;  they  are 
dismissed  at  once  as  trivial  and  degrading.  And 
jury  after  jury  has  acquiesced  in  this;  it  was  old 
Anthony's  boast,  in  his  last  days,  that  his  per 
centage  of  convictions,  in  40  years,  had  run  to 
98.5.1 

Comstockery  is  thus  grounded  firmly  upon  that 
profound  national  suspicion  of  the  arts,  that  trucu 
lent  and  almost  unanimous  Philistinism,  which  I 
have  described.  It  would  be  absurd  to  dismiss  it 
as  an  excrescence,  and  untypical  of  the  American 
mind.  But  it  is  typical,  too,  in  the  manner  in  which 
it  has  gone  beyond  that  mere  partiality  to  the  ac 
cumulation  of  a  definite  power,  and  made  that 

1 1  quote  from  page  157  of  Anthony  Comstock,  Fighter,  the 
official  biography.  On  page  239  the  number  of  his  prosecutions 
is  given  as  3,646,  with  2,682  convictions,  which  works  out  to 
but  73  per  cent.  He  is  credited  with  having  destroyed  50  tons 
of  books,  28,425  pounds  of  stereotype  plates,  16,900  photo 
graphic  negatives,  and  3,984,063  photographs— enough  to  fill 
"sixteen  freight  cars,  fifteen  loaded  with  ten  tons  each,  and  the 
Other  nearly  full." 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     255 

power  irresponsible  and  almost  irresistible.  It  was 
Comstock  himself,  in  fact,  who  invented  the  process 
whereby  his  followers  in  other  fields  of  moral  en 
deavour  have  forced  laws  into  the  statute  books 
upon  the  pretence  of  putting  down  John  Doe,  an  ac 
knowledged  malefactor,  and  then  turned  them 
savagely  upon  Richard  Roe,  a  peaceable,  well- 
meaning  and  hitherto  law-abiding  man.  And  it  was 
Comstock  who  first  capitalized  moral  endeavour 
like  baseball  or  the  soap  business,  and  made  him 
self  the  first  of  its  kept  professors,  and  erected  about 
himself  a  rampart  of  legal  and  financial  immunity 
which  rid  him  of  all  fear  of  mistakes  and  their  con 
sequences,  and  so  enabled  him  to  pursue  his  jehad 
with  all  the  advantages  in  his  favour.  He  was,  in 
brief,  more  than  the  greatest  Puritan  gladiator  of 
his  time;  he  was  the  Copernicus  of  a  quite  new  art 
and  science,  and  he  devised  a  technique  and  handed 
down  a  professional  ethic  that  no  rival  has  been 
able  to  better. 

The  whole  story  is  naively  told  in  "Anthony 
Comstock,  Fighter,"  1  a  work  which  passed  under 
the  approving  eye  of  the  old  war  horse  himself  and 
is  full  of  his  characteristic  pecksniffery.2  His 

iBy  Charles  Gallaudet  Trumbull;  New  York,  Fleming  H. 
Revell  Co.  (1913). 

2  An  example:  "All  the  evil  men  in  New  York  cannot  harm 


256  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

beginnings,  it  appears,  were  very  modest.  When 
he  arrived  in  New  York  from  the  Connecticut  hin 
terland,  he  was  a  penniless  and  uneducated  clod 
hopper,  just  out  of  the  Union  army,  and  his  first 
job  was  that  of  a  porter  in  a  wholesale  dry-goods 
house.  But  he  had  in  him  several  qualities  of  the 
traditional  Yankee  which  almost  always  insure  suc 
cess,  and  it  was  not  long  before  he  began  to  make 
his  way.  One  of  these  qualities  was  a  talent  for 
bold  and  ingratiating  address;  another  was  a  vast 
appetite  for  thrusting  himself  into  affairs,  a  yearn 
ing  to  run  things — what  the  Puritan  calls  public 
spirit.  The  two  constituted  his  fortune.  The  sec 
ond  brought  him  into  intimate  relations  with  the 
newly-organized  Young  Men's  Christian  Associa 
tion,  and  led  him  to  the  discovery  of  a  form  of 
moral  endeavour  that  was  at  once  novel  and  fas 
cinating — the  unearthing  and  denunciation  of  "im- 

a  hair  of  my  head,  were  it  not  the  will  of  God.  If  it  be  His 
will,  what  right  have  I  or  any  one  to  say  aught?  I  am  only  a 
speck,  a  mite,  before  God,  yet  not  a  hair  of  my  head  can  be 
harmed  unless  it  be  His  will.  Oh,  to  live,  to  feel,  to  be— Thy 
will  be  done!"  (pp.  84-5).  Again:  "I  prayed  that,  if  my  bill 
might  not  pass,  I  might  go  back  to  New  York  submissive  to 
God's  will,  feeling  that  it  was  for  the  best.  I  asked  for  for 
giveness  and  asked  that  my  bill  might  pass,  if  possible;  but 
over  and  above  all,  that  the  will  of  God  be  done"  (p.  6). 
Nevertheless,  Comstock  neglected  no  chance  to  apply  his  back 
stairs  pressure  to  the  members  of  both  Houses. 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     257 

moral"  literature.  The  first,  once  he  had  at 
tracted  attention  thereby,  got  him  the  favourable 
notice,  and  finally  the  unlimited  support,  of  the  late 
Morris  K.  Jesup,  one  of  the  earliest  and  perhaps 
the  greatest  of  the  moral  entrepreneurs  that  I  have 
described.  Jesup  was  very  rich,  and  very  eager  to 
bring  the  whole  nation  up  to  grace  by  force  ma- 
jeure.  He  was  the  banker  of  at  least  a  dozen 
grandiose  programs  of  purification  in  the  seventies 
and  eighties.  In  Comstock  he  found  precisely  the 
sort  of  field  agent  that  he  was  looking  for,  and  the 
two  presently  constituted  the  most  formidable  team 
of  professional  reformers  that  the  country  had  ever 
seen. 

The  story  of  the  passage  of  the  Act  of  Congress 
of  March  3,  1873, *  under  cover  of  which  the  Com 
stock  Society  still  carries  on  its  campaigns  of  snout 
ing  and  suppression,  is  a  classical  tale  of  Puritan 
impudence  and  chicanery.  Comstock,  with  Jesup 
and  other  rich  men  backing  him  financially  and 
politically,2  managed  the  business.  First,  a  num 
ber  of  spectacular  raids  were  made  on  the  pub 
lishers  of  such  pornographic  books  as  "The 
Memoirs  of  Fanny  Hill"  and  "Only  a  Boy." 

1  Now,  with   amendments,  sections  211,  212  and  245  of  the 
United  States  Criminal  Code. 

2  Vide  Anthony  Comstock,  Fighter,  pp.  81,  85,  94. 


258  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

Then  the  newspapers  were  filled  with  inflammatory 
matter  about  the  wide  dispersal  of  such  stuff,  and 
its  demoralizing  effects  upon  the  youth  of  the  repub 
lic.  Then  a  committee  of  self -advertising  clergy 
men  and  "Christian  millionaires"  was  organized  to 
launch  a  definite  "movement."  And  then  a  direct 
attack  was  made  upon  Congress,  and,  to  the  tune  of 
fiery  moral  indignation,  the  bill  prepared  by  Corn- 
stock  himself  was  forced  through  both  houses.  All 
opposition,  if  only  the  opposition  of  inquiry,  was 
overborne  in  the  usual  manner.  That  is  to  say, 
every  Congressman  who  presumed  to  ask  what  it 
was  all  about,  or  to  point  out  obvious  defects  in  the 
bill,  was  disposed  of  by  the  insinuation,  or  even  the 
direct  charge,  that  he  was  a  covert  defender  of 
obscene  books,  and,  by  inference,  of  the  carnal 
recreations  described  in  them.  We  have  grown 
familiar  of  late  with  this  process:  it  was  displayed 
at  full  length  in  the  passage  of  the  Mann  Act,  and 
again  when  the  Webb  Act  and  the  Prohibition 
Amendment  were  before  Congress.  In  1873  its 
effectiveness  was  helped  out  by  its  novelty,  and  so 
the  Comstock  bill  was  rushed  through  both  houses 
in  the  closing  days  of  a  busy  session,  and  President 
Grant  accommodatingly  signed  it. 

Once  it  was  upon  the  books,  Comstock  made  fur 
ther  use  of  the  prevailing  uproar  to  have  himself 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     259 

appointed  a  special  agent  of  the  Postoffice  Depart 
ment  to  enforce  it,  and  with  characteristic  cunning 
refused  to  take  any  salary.  Had  his  job  carried  a 
salary,  it  would  have  excited  the  acquisitiveness  of 
other  virtuosi;  as  it  was,  he  was  secure.  As  for 
the  necessary  sinews  of  war,  he  knew  well  that  he 
could  get  them  from  Jesup.  Within  a  few  weeks, 
indeed,  the  latter  had  perfected  a  special  organ 
ization  for  the  enforcement  of  the  new  statute,  and 
it  still  flourishes  as  the  New  York  Society  for  the 
Suppression  of  Vice;  or,  as  it  is  better  known,  the 
Comstock  Society.  The  new  Federal  Act,  dealing 
only  with  the  mails,  left  certain  loopholes;  they 
were  plugged  up  by  fastening  drastic  amendments 
upon  the  New  York  Code  of  Criminal  Procedure — 
amendments  forced  through  the  legislature  pre 
cisely  as  the  Federal  Act  had  been  forced  through 
Congress.1  With  these  laws  in  his  hands  Comstock 
was  ready  for  his  career.  It  was  his  part  of  the 
arrangement  to  supply  the  thrills  of  the  chase;  it 
was  Jesup's  part  to  find  the  money.  The  partner 
ship  kept  up  until  the  death  of  Jesup,  in  1908,  and 
after  that  Comstock  readily  found  new  backers. 
Even  his  own  death,  in  1915,  did  not  materially 
alter  a  scheme  of  things  which  offered  such  admi- 

i  Now  sections  1141,  1142  and  1143  of  the  Penal  Laws  of 
New  York. 


260  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

Table  opportunities  for  the  exercise  of  the  Puritan 
love  of  spectacular  and  relentless  pursuit,  the  Puri 
tan  delusion  of  moral  grandeur  and  infallibility, 
the  Puritan  will  to  power. 

Ostensibly,  as  I  have  said,  the  new  laws  were 
designed  to  put  down  the  traffic  in  frankly  porno 
graphic  books  and  pictures — a  traffic  which,  of 
course,  found  no  defenders — but  Comstock  had  so 
drawn  them  that  their  actual  sweep  was  vastly 
wider,  and  once  he  was  firmly  in  the  saddle  his  en 
terprises  scarcely  knew  limits.  Having  disposed 
of  "The  Confessions  of  Maria  Monk"  and  "Night 
Life  in  Paris,"  he  turned  to  Rabelais  and  the  De 
cameron,  and  having  driven  these  ancients  under 
the  book-counters,  he  pounced  upon  Zola,  Balzac 
and  Daudet,  and  having  disposed  of  these  too,  he 
began  a  pogrom  which,  in  other  hands,  eventually 
brought  down  such  astounding  victims  as  Thomas 
Hardy's  "Jude  the  Obscure"  and  Harold  Frederic's 
"The  Damnation  of  Theron  Ware."  All  through 
the  eighties  and  nineties  this  ecstatic  campaign  con 
tinued,  always  increasing  in  violence  and  effective 
ness.  Comstock  became  a  national  celebrity;  his 
doings  were  as  copiously  reported  by  the  news 
papers  as  those  of  P.  T.  Barnum  or  John  L.  Sulli 
van.  Imitators  sprang  up  in  all  the  larger  cities: 
there  was  hardly  a  public  library  in  the  land  that 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     261 

did  not  begin  feverishly  expurgating  its  shelves; 
the  publication  of  fiction,  and  particularly  of  for 
eign  fiction,  took  on  the  character  of  an  extra 
hazardous  enterprise.  Not,  of  course,  that  the 
reign  of  terror  was  not  challenged,  and  Comstock 
himself  denounced.  So  early  as  1876  a  national 
organization  demanding  a  reasonable  amendment 
of  the  postal  laws  got  on  its  legs ;  in  the  late  eighties 
"Citizen"  George  Francis  Train  defied  the  whirl 
wind  by  printing  the  Old  Testament  as  a  serial; 
many  indignant  victims,  acquitted  by  some  chance 
in  the  courts,  brought  suit  against  Comstock  for 
damages.  Moreover,  an  occasional  judge,  stand 
ing  out  boldly  against  the  usual  intimidation,  de 
nounced  him  from  the  bench;  one  of  them,  Judge 
Jenkins,  accused  him  specifically  of  "fraud  and 
lying"  and  other  "dishonest  practices."  l  But  the 
spirit  of  American  Puritanism  was  on  his  side. 
His  very  extravagances  at  once  stimulated  and  sat 
isfied  the  national  yearning  for  a  hot  chase,  a  good 
show — and  in  the  complaints  of  his  victims,  that 
the  art  of  letters  was  being  degraded,  that  the  coun 
try  was  made  ridiculous,  the  newspaper-reading 
populace  could  see  no  more  than  an  affectation. 
The  reform  organization  of  1876  lasted  but  five 

i  U.  S.  vt.  Casper,  reported  in  the  Twentieth  Century,  Feb. 
11,  1892. 


262  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

years;  and  then  disbanded  without  having  accom 
plished  anything;  Train  was  put  on  trial  for  "de 
bauching  the  young"  with  an  "obscene"  serial;  * 
juries  refused  to  bring  in  punitive  verdicts  against 
the  master  showman. 

In  carrying  on  this  way  of  extermination  upon 
all  ideas  that  violated  their  private  notions  of  vir 
tue  and  decorum,  Comstock  and  his  followers  were 
very  greatly  aided  by  the  vagueness  of  the  law.  It 
prohibited  the  use  of  the  mails  for  transporting  all 
matter  of  an  "obscene,  lewd,  lascivious  ...  or 
filthy"  character,  but  conveniently  failed  to  define 
these  adjectives.  As  a  result,  of  course,  it  was 
possible  to  bring  an  accusation  against  practically 
any  publication  that  aroused  the  comstockian 
blood-lust,  however  innocently,  and  to  subject  the 
persons  responsible  for  it  to  costly,  embarrassing 
and  often  dangerous  persecution.  No  man,  said 
Dr.  Johnson,  would  care  to  go  on  trial  for  his  life 
once  a  week,  even  if  possessed  of  absolute  proofs 
of  his  innocence.  By  the  same  token,  no  man 

iThe  trial  court  dodged  the  issue  by  directing  the  jury  to 
find  the  prisoner  not  guilty  on  the  ground  of  insanity.  The 
necessary  implication,  of  course,  was  that  the  publication  com 
plained  of  was  actually  obscene.  In  1895,  one  Wise,  of  Clay 
Center,  Kansas,  sent  a  quotation  from  the  Bible  through  the 
mails,  and  was  found  guilty  of  mailing  obscene  matter.  See 
The  Free  Press  Anthology,  compiled  by  Theodore  Schroeder; 
New  York,  Truth  Seeker  Pub.  Co.,  1909,  p.  258. 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     263 

wants  to  be  arraigned  in  a  criminal  court,  and  dis 
played  in  the  sensational  newspapers,  as  a  pur 
veyor  of  indecency,  however  strong  his  assurance 
of  innocence.  Comstock  made  use  of  this  fact  in 
an  adroit  and  characteristically  unconscionable 
manner.  He  held  the  menace  of  prosecution  over 
all  who  presumed  to  dispute  his  tyranny,  and  when 
he  could  not  prevail  by  a  mere  threat,  he  did  not 
hesitate  to  begin  proceedings,  and  to  carry  them 
forward  with  the  aid  of  florid  proclamations  to  the 
newspapers  and  ill  concealed  intimidations  of 
judges  and  juries. 

The  last-named  business  succeeded  as  it  always 
does  in  this  country,  where  the  judiciary  is  quite  as 
sensitive  to  the  suspicion  of  sinfulness  as  the  legis 
lative  arm.  A  glance  at  the  decisions  handed  down 
during  the  forty  years  of  Comstock's  chief  activity 
shows  a  truly  amazing  willingness  to  accommodate 
him  in  his  pious  enterprises.  On  the  one  hand, 
there  was  gradually  built  up  a  court-made  defini 
tion  of  obscenity  which  eventually  embraced  al 
most  every  conceivable  violation  of  Puritan  pru 
dery,  and  on  the  other  hand  the  victim's  means  of 
defence  were  steadily  restricted  and  conditioned, 
until  in  the  end  he  had  scarcely  any  at  all.  This  is 
the  state  of  the  law  today.  It  is  held  in  the  lead 
ing  cases  that  anything  is  obscene  which  may  excite 


264  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

"impure  thoughts"  in  "the  minds  ...  of  persons 
that  are  susceptible  to  impure  thoughts," x  or 
•which  "tends  to  deprave  the  minds"  of  any  who, 
because  they  are  "young  and  inexperienced,"  are 
"open  to  such  influences"  2 — in  brief,  that  any 
thing  is  obscene  that  is  not  fit  to  be  handed  to  a 
child  just  learning  to  read,  or  that  may  imaginably 
stimulate  the  lubricity  of  the  most  foul-minded.  It 
is  held  further  that  words  that  are  perfectly  inno 
cent  in  themselves — "words,  abstractly  considered, 
[that]  may  be  free  from  vulgarism" — may  yet  be 
assumed,  by  a  friendly  jury,  to  be  likely  to 
"arouse  a  libidinous  passion  ...  in  the  mind  of 
a  modest  woman."  (I  quote  exactly!  The  court 
failed  to  define  "modest  woman.")  3  Yet  further, 
it  is  held  that  any  book  is  obscene  "which  is  unbe 
coming,  immodest.  .  .  ."  Obviously,  this  last 
decision  throws  open  the  door  to  endless  imbecili 
ties,  for  its  definition  merely  begs  the  question,  and 
so  makes  a  reasonable  solution  ten  times  harder. 
It  is  in  such  mazes  that  the  Comstocks  safely  lurk. 
Almost  any  printed  allusion  to  sex  may  be  argued 

iU.  S.  vs.  Bennett,  16  Blatchford,  368-9  (1877). 

2  Idem,  362;  People  vs.  Muller,  96  N.  Y.,  411;  U.  S.  vs. 
Clark,  38  Fed.  Rep.  734. 

3U.  S.  vs.  Moore,  129  Fed.,  160-1    (1904). 

*  U.  S.  vs.  Heywood,  judge's  charge,  Boston,  1877.  Quoted 
in  U.  S.  vs.  Bennett,  16  Blatchford. 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     265 

against  as  unbecoming  in  a  moral  republic,  and 
once  it  is  unbecoming  it  is  also  obscene. 

In  meeting  such  attacks  the  defendant  must  do 
his  fighting  without  weapons.  He  cannot  allege  in 
his  defence  that  the  offending  work  was  put  forth 
for  a  legitimate,  necessary  and  decent  purpose;  1 
he  cannot  allege  that  a  passage  complained  of  is 
from  a  standard  work,  itself  in  general  circula 
tion;  2  he  cannot  offer  evidence  that  the  person  to 
whom  a  book  or  picture  was  sold  or  exhibited  was 
not  actually  depraved  by  it,  or  likely  to  be  depraved 
by  it ; 3  he  cannot  rest  his  defence  on  its  lack  of  such 
effect  upon  the  jurymen  themselves;4  he  cannot 
plead  that  the  alleged  obscenity,  in  point  of  fact,  is 
couched  in  decent  and  unobjectionable  language;  5 
he  cannot  plead  that  the  same  or  a  similar  work  has 
gone  unchallenged  elsewhere ; Q  he  cannot  argue 
that  the  circulation  of  works  of  the  same  class  has 

1  U.  S.  vs.  Slenker,  32  Fed.  Rep.,  693;  People  vs.  Muller,  96 
N.  Y.  408-414;  Anti-Vice  Motion  Picture  Co.  vs.  Bell,  reported 
in  the  New  York  Law  Journal,  Sept.  22,  1916;  Sociological  Re 
search  Film  Corporation  vs.  the  City  of  New  York,  83  Misc. 
815;  Steele  vs.  Bannon,  7  L.  R.  C.  L.  Series,  267;  U.  S.  vs. 
Means,  42  Fed.  Rep.  605,  etc. 

2  U.  S.  vs.  Cheseman,  19  Fed.  Rep.,  597  (1884). 
s  People  vs.  Muller,  96  X.  Y.,  413. 

4  U.  S.  vs.  Bennett,  16  Blatchford,  368-9. 

5  U.  S.  vs.  Smith,  45  Fed.  Rep.  478. 

e  U.  S.  vs.  Bennett,  16  Blatchford,  360-1 ;  People  vs.  Berry, 
1  N.  Y.,  Crim.  R.,  32. 


266  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

set  up  a  presumption  of  toleration,  and  a  tacit 
limitation  of  the  definition  of  obscenity.1  The 
general  character  of  a  book  is  not  a  defence  of  a 
particular  passage,  however  unimportant;  if  there 
is  the  slightest  descent  to  what  is  "unbecoming," 
the  whole  may  be  ruthlessly  condemned.2  Nor  is 
it  an  admissible  defence  to  argue  that  the  book  was 
not  generally  circulated,  and  that  the  copy  in  evi 
dence  was  obtained  by  an  agent  provocateur,  and 
by  false  representations.3  Finally,  all  the  deci 
sions  deny  the  defendant  the  right  to  introduce  any 
testimony,  whether  expert  or  otherwise,  that  a  book 
is  of  artistic  value  and  not  pornographic,  and  that 
its  effect  upon  normal  persons  is  not  pernicious. 
Upon  this  point  the  jury  is  the  sole  judge,  and  it 
cannot  be  helped  to  its  decision  by  taking  other 
opinions,  or  by  hearing  evidence  as  to  what  is  the 
general  opinion. 

Occasionally,  as  I  have  said,  a  judge  has  re 
volted  against  this  intolerable  state  of  the  court-  and 
Comstock-made  law,  and  directed  a  jury  to  dis 
regard  these  astounding  decisions.4  In  a  recent 

i  People  vs.  Muller,  32  Hun.,  212-215. 

2U.  S.  vs.  Bennett,  16  Blatchford,  361. 

3  U.  S.  vs.  Moore,  16  Fed.  Rep.,  39;  U.  S.  vs.  Wright,  38  Fed. 
Rep.,  106;  U.  S.  vs.  Dorsey,  40  Fed.  Rep.,  752;  U.  S.  vs.  Baker, 
155  Mass.,  287;  U.  S.  vs.  Grimm,  15  Supreme  Court  Rep.,  472. 

*  Various  cases  in  point  are  cited  in  the  Brief  on  Behalf  of 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     267 

New  York  case  Judge  Samuel  Seabury  actually 
ruled  that  "it  is  no  part  of  the  duty  of  courts  to  ex 
ercise  a  censorship  over  literary  productions." 
But  in  general  the  judiciary  has  been  curiously 
complaisant,  and  more  than  once  a  Puritan  on  the 
bench  has  delighted  the  Comstocks  by  prosecuting 
their  case  for  them.2  With  such  decisions  in  their 
hands  and  such  aid  from  the  other  side  of  the  bar,  it 
is  no  wonder  that  they  enter  upon  their  campaigns 
with  impudence  and  assurance.  All  the  odds  are 
in  their  favour  from  the  start.  They  have  statutes 
deliberately  designed  to  make  the  defence  onerous; 
they  are  familiar  by  long  experience  with  all  the 

Plaintiff  in  Dreiser  vs.  John  Lane  Co.,  App.  Div.  1st  Dept.  N. 
Y.,  1917.  I  cite  a  few:  People  vs.  Eastman,  188  N.  Y.,  478; 
U.  S.  vs.  Swearingen,  161  U.  S.,  446;  People  vs.  Tylkoff,  212 
N.  Y.,  197;  In  the  matter  of  Worthington  Co.,  62  St.  Rep. 
116-7;  St.  Hubert  Guild  vs.  Quinn,  64  Misc.,  336-341.  But 
nearly  all  such  decisions  are  in  Xew  York  cases.  In  the  Fed 
eral  courts  the  Co/nstocks  usually  have  their  way. 

1  St.  Hubert  Guild  vs.  Quinn,  64  Misc.,  339. 

2  For  example,  Judge  Chas.  L.  Benedict,  sitting  in  U.  S.  vs. 
Bennett,  op.  cit.    This  is  a  leading  case,  and  the  Comstocks 
make   much   of  it.     Nevertheless,   a   contemporary   newspaper 
denounces   Judge  Benedict   for  his  "intense  bigotry"   and   al 
leges  that  "the  only  evidence  which  he  permitted  to  be  given 
was   on   the   side   of  the   prosecution."     (Port   Jervis,   N.   Y., 
Evening  Gazette,  March  22,  1879.)     Moreover,  a  juror  in  the 
case,  Alfred  A.  Valentine,  thought  it  necessary  to  inform  the 
newspapers  that  he  voted  guilty  only  in  obedience  to  judicial 
instructions. 


268  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

tricks  and  surprises  of  the  game;  they  are  shel 
tered  behind  organizations,  incorporated  without 
capital  and  liberally  chartered  by  trembling  legis 
latures,  which  make  reprisals  impossible  in  case 
of  failure;  above  all,  they  have  perfected  the  busi 
ness  of  playing  upon  the  cowardice  and  vanity  of 
judges  and  prosecuting  officers.  The  newspapers, 
with  very  few  exceptions,  give  them  ready  aid. 
Theoretically,  perhaps,  many  newspaper  editors  are 
opposed  to  comstockery,  and  sometimes  they  de 
nounce  it  with  great  eloquence,  but  when  a  good 
show  is  offered  they  are  always  in  favour  of  the 
showman  * — and  the  Comstocks  are  showmen  of 
undoubted  skill.  They  know  how  to  make  a  vic 
tim  jump  and  writhe  in  the  ring;  they  have  a  talent 
for  finding  victims  who  are  prominent  enough  to 
arrest  attention;  they  shrewdly  capitalize  the  fact 
that  the  pursuer  appears  more  heroic  than  the  prey, 
and  the  further  fact  that  the  newspaper  reader  is 
impatient  of  artistic  pretensions  and  glad  to  see  an 
artist  made  ridiculous.  And  behind  them  there  is 
always  the  steady  pressure  of  Puritan  prejudice — 
the  Puritan  feeling  that  "immorality"  is  the 
blackest  of  crimes,  and  that  its  practitioner  has  no 
rights.  It  was  by  making  use  of  these  elements 

i  Vide  Newspaper  Morals,  by  H.  L.  Mencken,  the  Atlantic 
Monthly,  March,  1914. 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     269 

that  Comstock  achieved  his  prodigies,  and  it  is  by 
making  use  of  them  that  his  heirs  and  assigns  keep 
up  the  sport  today.  Their  livelihood  depends  upon 
the  money  they  can  raise  among  the  righteous,  and 
the  amount  they  can  raise  depends  upon  the  quality 
of  the  entertainment  they  offer.  Hence  their  adept 
search  for  shining  marks.  Hence,  for  example,  the 
spectacular  raid  upon  the  Art  Students'  League,  on 
August  2,  1906.  Hence  the  artful  turning  to  their 
own  use  of  the  vogue  of  such  sensational  dramatists 
as  Eugene  Brieux  and  George  Bernard  Shaw,  and 
of  such  isolated  plays  as  "Trilby"  and  "Sapho." 
Hence  the  barring  from  the  mails  of  the  inflamma 
tory  report  of  the  Chicago  Vice  Commission — a 
strange,  strange  case  of  dog  eating  dog. 

But  here  we  have  humour.  There  is,  however, 
no  humour  in  the  case  of  a  serious  author  who  sees 
his  work  damaged  and  perhaps  mined  by  a  mali 
cious  and  unintelligent  attack,  and  himself  held 
up  to  public  obloquy  as  one  with  the  vendors  of 
pamphlets  of  flagellation  and  filthy  "marriage 
guides."  He  finds  opposing  him  a  flat  denial  of 
his  decent  purpose  as  an  artist,  and  a  stupid  and  ill- 
natured  logic  that  baffles  sober  answer.1  He  finds 

i  As  a  fair  specimen  of  the  sort  of  reasoning  that  prevails 
among  the  consecrated  brethren  I  offer  the  following  extract 
from  an  argument  against  birth  control  delivered  by  the 


270  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

on  his  side  only  the  half-hearted  support  of  a  pub 
lisher  whose  interest  in  a  single  book  is  limited  to 
his  profits  from  it,  and  who  desires  above  all  things 
to  evade  a  nuisance  and  an  expense.  Not  a  few 
publishers,  knowing  the  constant  possibility  of  sud 
den  and  arbitrary  attack,  insert  a  clause  in  their 
contracts  whereby  an  author  must  secure  them 
against  damage  from  any  "immoral"  matter  in  his 
book.  They  read  and  approve  the  manuscript, 
they  print  the  book  and  sell  it — but  if  it  is  unlucky 
enough  to  attract  the  comstockian  lightning,  the 
author  has  the  whole  burden  to  bear,1  and  if  they 

present  active  head  of  the  New  York  Society  for  the  Sup 
pression  of  Vice  before  the  Women's  City  Club  of  New  York, 
Nov.  17,  1916: 

"Natural  and  inevitable  conditions,  over  which  we  can  have 
no  control,  will  assert  themselves  wherever  population  becomes 
too  dense.  This  has  been  exemplified  time  after  time  in  the 
history  of  the  world  where  over-population  has  been  corrected 
by  manifestations  of  nature  or  by  war,  flood  or  pestilence. 
.  .  .  Belgium  may  have  been  regarded  as  an  over-populated 
country.  Is  it  a  coincidence  that,  during  the  past  two  years, 
the  territory  of  Belgium  has  been  devastated  and  its  popula 
tion  scattered  throughout  the  other  countries  of  the  world?" 

i  For  example,  the  printed  contract  of  the  John  Lane  Co., 
publisher  of  Dreiser's  The  "Genius,"  contains  this  provision: 
"The  author  hereby  guarantees  .  .  .  that  the  work  .  .  .  con 
tains  nothing  of  a  scandalous,  an  immoral  or  a  libelous  na 
ture."  The  contract  for  the  publication  of  The  "Genius"  was 
signed  on  July  30,  1914.  The  manuscript  had  been  carefully 
read  by  representatives  of  the  publisher,  and  presumably 
passed  as  not  scandalous  or  immoral,  inasmuch  as  the  publi- 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     271 

seek  safety  and  economy  by  yielding,  as  often  hap 
pens,  he  must  consent  to  the  mutilation  or  even  the 
suppression  of  his  work.  The  result  is  that  a 
writer  in  such  a  situation,  is  practically  beaten  be 
fore  he  can  offer  a  defence.  The  professional 
book-baiters  have  laws  to  their  liking,  and  courts 
pliant  to  their  exactions;  they  fill  the  newspapers 
with  inflammatory  charges  before  the  accused  gets 
his  day  in  court;  they  have  the  aid  of  prosecuting 
officers  who  fear  the  political  damage  of  their 
enmity,  and  of  the  enmity  of  their  wealthy  and 
influential  backers;  above  all,  they  have  the  com 
mand  of  far  more  money  than  any  author  can  hope 
to  muster.  Finally,  they  derive  an  advantage  from 
two  of  the  most  widespread  of  human  weaknesses, 
the  first  being  envy  and  the  second  being  fear. 
When  an  author  is  attacked,  a  good  many  of  his 
rivals  see  only  a  personal  benefit  in  his  difficulties, 

cation  of  a  scandalous  or  immoral  book  would  have  exposed 
the  publisher  to  prosecution.  About  8,000  copies  were  sold  un 
der  this  contract.  Two  years  later,  in  July,  1916,  the  Society 
for  the  Suppression  of  Vice  threatened  to  begin  a  prosecution 
unless  the  book  was  withdrawn.  It  was  withdrawn  forthwith, 
and  Dreiser  was  compelled  to  enter  suit  for  a  performance  of 
the  contract.  The  withdrawal,  it  will  be  noticed,  was  not  in 
obedience  to  a  court  order,  but  followed  a  mere  comstockian 
threat.  Yet  Dreiser  was  at  once  deprived  of  his  royalties,  and 
forced  into  expensive  litigation.  Had  it  not  been  that  eminent 
counsel  volunteered  for  his  defence,  his  personal  means  would 
have  been  insufficient  to  have  got  him  even  a  day  in  court. 


272  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

and  not  a  menace  to  the  whole  order,  and  a  good 
many  others  are  afraid  to  go  to  his  aid  because 
of  the  danger  of  bringing  down  the  moralists' 
rage  upon  themselves.  Both  of  these  weak 
nesses  revealed  themselves  very  amusingly  in 
the  Dreiser  case,  and  I  hope  to  detail  their  oper 
ations  at  some  length  later  on,  when  I  describe  that 
cause  celebre  in  a  separate  work. 

Now  add  to  the  unfairness  arid  malignancy  of 
the  attack  its  no  less  disconcerting  arbitrariness  and 
fortuitousness,  and  the  path  of  the  American 
author  is  seen  to  be  strewn  with  formidable  en 
tanglements  indeed.  With  the  law  what  it  is,  he  is 
quite  unable  to  decide  a  priori  what  is  permitted  by 
the  national  delicacy  and  what  is  not,  nor  can  he 
get  any  light  from  the  recorded  campaigns  of  the 
moralists.  They  seem  to  strike  blindly,  unintel- 
ligently,  without  any  coherent  theory  or  plan. 
"Trilby"  is  assaulted  by  the  united  comstockery  of 
a  dozen  cities,  and  "The  Yoke"  somehow  escapes. 
"Hagar  Revelly"  is  made  the  subject  of  a  double 
prosecution  in  the  State  and  Federal  courts,  and 
"Love's  Pilgrimage"  and  "One  Man"  go  unmo 
lested.  The  publisher  of  Przybyszewski's  "Homo 
Sapiens"  is  forced  to  withdraw  it;  the  publisher 
of  Artzibashef's  "Sanine"  follows  it  with  "The 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     273 

Breaking  Point."  The  serious  work  of  a  Forel 
is  brought  into  court  as  pornography,  and  the 
books  of  Havelock  Ellis  are  barred  from  the  mails; 
the  innumerable  volumes  on  "sex  hygiene"  by 
tawdry  clergymen  and  smutty  old  maids  are  circu 
lated  by  the  million  and  without  challenge.  Frank 
Harris  is  deprived  of  a  publisher  for  his  "Oscar 
Wilde:  His  Life  and  Confession"  by  threats  of  im 
mediate  prosecution;  the  newspapers  meanwhile 
dedicate  thousands  of  columns  to  the  filthy  amuse 
ments  of  Harry  Thaw.  George  Moore's  "Memoirs 
of  My  Dead  Life"  are  bowdlerized,  James  Lane 
Allen's  "A  Summer  in  Arcady"  is  barred  from 
libraries,  and  a  book  by  D.  H.  Lawrence  is  forbid 
den  publication  altogether;  at  the  same  time  half  a 
dozen  cheap  magazines  devoted  to  sensational  sex 
stories  attain  to  hundreds  of  thousands  of  circula 
tion.  A  serious  book  by  David  Graham  Phillips, 
published  serially  in  a  popular  monthly,  is  raided 
the  moment  it  appears  between  covers;  a  trashy 
piece  of  nastiness  by  Elinor  Glyn  goes  unmolested. 
Worse,  books  are  sold  for  months  and  even  years 
without  protest,  and  then  suddenly  attacked;  Drei 
ser's  "The  'Genius,'"  Kreymborg's  "Edna"  and 
Forel's  "The  Sexual  Question"  are  examples.  Still 
worse,  what  is  held  to  be  unobjectionable  in  one 


274  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

State  is  forbidden  in  another  as  contra  bonos 
mores.1  Altogether,  there  is  madness,  and  no 
method  in  it.  The  livelihoods  and  good  names  of 
hard-striving  and  decent  men  are  at  the  mercy  of 
the  whims  of  a  horde  of  fanatics  and  mountebanks, 
and  they  have  no  way  of  securing  themselves 
against  attack,  and  no  redress  for  their  loss  when 
it  comes. 

§6 

So  beset,  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  typical  Amer 
ican  maker  of  books  becomes  a  timorous  and  in 
effective  fellow,  whose  work  tends  inevitably  to 
ward  a  feeble  superficiality.  Sucking  in  the  Puri 
tan  spirit  with  the  very  air  he  breathes,  and  per 
haps  burdened  inwardly  with  an  inheritance  of  the 
actual  Puritan  stupidity,  he  is  further  kept  upon  the 
straight  path  of  chemical  purity  by  the  very  real 
perils  that  I  have  just  rehearsed.  The  result  is  a 
literature  full  of  the  mawkishness  that  the  late 
Henry  James  so  often  roared  against — a  literature 
almost  wholly  detached  from  life  as  men  are  living 
it  in  the  world — in  George  Moore's  phrase,  a  liter- 

i  The  chief  sufferers  from  this  conflict  are  the  authors  of 
moving  pictures.  What  they  face  at  the  hands  of  imbecile 
State  boards  of  censorship  is  described  at  length  by  Channing 
Pollock  in  an  article  entitled  "Swinging  the  Censor"  in  the  Bul 
letin  of  the  Authors'  League  of  America  for  March,  1917. 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     275 

attire  still  at  nurse.  It  is  on  the  side  of  sex  that  the 
appointed  virtuosi  of  virtue  exercise  their  chief  re 
pressions,  for  it  is  sex  that  especially  fascinates  the 
lubricious  Puritan  mind;  but  the  conventual  reti 
cence  that  thus  becomes  the  enforced  fashion  in  one 
field  extends  itself  to  all  others.  Our  fiction,  in 
general,  is  marked  by  an  artificiality  as  marked  as 
that  of  Eighteenth  Century  poetry  or  the  later 
Georgian  drama.  The  romance  in  it  runs  to  set 
forms  and  stale  situations;  the  revelation,  by  such 
a  book  as  "The  Titan,"  that  there  may  be  a  glamour 
as  entrancing  in  the  way  of  a  conqueror  of  men  as 
in  the  way  of  a  youth  with  a  maid,  remains  isolated 
and  exotic.  We  have  no  first-rate  political  or  re 
ligious  novel;  we  have  no  first-rate  war  story;  de 
spite  all  our  national  engrossment  in  commercial 
enterprise,  we  have  few  second-rate  tales  of  busi 
ness.  Romance,  in  American  fiction,  still  means 
only  a  somewhat  childish  amorousness  and  senti 
mentality — the  love  affairs  of  Paul  and  Virginia, 
or  the  pale  adulteries  of  their  elders.  And  on  the 
side  of  realism  there  is  an  almost  equal  vacuity  and 
lack  of  veracity.  The  action  of  all  the  novels  of 
the  Howells  school  goes  on  within  four  walls  of 
painted  canvas;  they  begin  to  shock  once  they  de 
scribe  an  attack  of  asthma  or  a  steak  burning  below 
stairs;  they  never  penetrate  beneath  the  flow  of 


276  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

social  concealments  and  urbanities  to  the  passions 
that  actually  move  men  and  women  to  their  acts, 
a»nd  the  great  forces  that  circumscribe  and  condi 
tion  personality.  So  obvious  a  piece  of  reporting 
as  Upton  Sinclair's  "The  Jungle"  or  Robert  Her- 
rick's  "Together"  makes  a  sensation;  the  appear 
ance  of  a  "Jennie  Gerhardt"  or  a  "Hagar  Revelly" 
brings  forth  a  growl  of  astonishment  and  rage. 

In  all  this  dread  of  free  inquiry,  this  childish 
skittishness  in  both  writers  and  public,  this  dearth 
of  courage  and  even  of  curiosity,  the  influence  of 
comstockery  is  undoubtedly  to  be  detected.  It  con 
stitutes  a  sinister  and  ever-present  menace  to  all 
men  of  ideas;  it  affrights  the  publisher  and  para 
lyzes  the  author;  no  one  on  the  outside  can  imagine 
its  burden  as  a  practical  concern.  I  am,  in  mo 
ments  borrowed  from  more  palatable  business,  the 
editor  of  an  American  magazine,  and  I  thus  know 
at  first  hand  what  the  burden  is.  That  magazine  is 
anything  but  a  popular  one,  in  the  current  sense. 
It  sells  at  a  relatively  high  price;  it  contains  no 
pictures  or  other  baits  for  the  childish;  it  is  frankly 
addressed  to  a  sophisticated  minority.  I  may  thus 
assume  reasonably,  I  believe,  that  its  readers  are 
not  sex-curious  and  itching  adolescents,  just  as  my 
colleague  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly  may  assume  rea 
sonably  that  his  readers  are  not  Italian  immi- 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     277 

grants.  Nevertheless,  as  a  practical  editor,  I  find 
that  the  Comstocks,  near  and  far,  are  oftener  in 
my  mind's  eye  than  my  actual  patrons.  The  thing 
I  always  have  to  decide  about  a  manuscript  offered 
for  publication,  before  ever  I  give  any  thought  to 
its  artistic  merit  and  suitability,  is  the  question 
whether  its  publication  will  be  permitted — not  even 
whether  it  is  intrinsically  good  or  evil,  moral  or 
immoral,  but  whether  some  roving  Methodist 
preacher,  self -commissioned  to  keep  watch  on  let 
ters,  will  read  indecency  into  it.  Not  a  week  passes 
that  I  do  not  decline  some  sound  and  honest  piece 
of  work  for  no  other  reason.  I  have  a  long  list  of 
such  things  by  American  authors,  well-devised, 
well-imagined,  well-executed,  respectable  as  human 
documents  and  as  works  of  art — but  never  to  be 
printed  in  mine  or  any  other  American  magazine. 
It  includes  four  or  five  short  stories  of  the  very  first 
rank,  and  the  best  one-act  play  yet  done,  to  my 
knowledge,  by  an  American.  All  of  these  pieces 
would  go  into  type  at  once  on  the  Continent;  no 
sane  man  would  think  of  objecting  to  them;  they 
are  no  more  obscene,  to  a  normal  adult,  than  his 
own  bare  legs.  But  they  simply  cannot  be  printed 
in  the  United  States,  with  the  law  what  it  is  and  the 
courts  what  they  are. 

I  know  many  other  editors.     All  of  them  are  in 


278  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

the  same  boat.  Some  of  them  try  to  get  around 
the  difficulty  by  pecksniffery  more  or  less  open — 
for  example,  by  fastening  a  moral  purpose  upon 
works  of  art,  and  hawking  them  as  uplifting.1 
Others,  facing  the  intolerable  fact,  yield  to  it  with 
resignation.  And  if  they  didn't?  Well,  if  one  of 
them  didn't,  any  professional  moralist  could  go 
before  a  police  magistrate,  get  a  warrant  upon  a 
simple  affidavit,  raid  the  office  of  the  offending  edi 
tor,  seize  all  the  magazines  in  sight,  and  keep  them 
impounded  until  after  the  disposition  of  the  case. 
Editors  cannot  afford  to  take  this  risk.  Magazines 
are  perishable  goods.  Even  if,  after  a  trial  has 
been  had,  they  are  returned,  they  are  worthless  save 
as  waste  paper.  And  what  may  be  done  with 
copies  found  in  the  actual  office  of  publication  may 
be  done  too  with  copies  found  on  news-stands,  and 
not  only  in  one  city,  but  in  two,  six,  a  dozen,  a  hun 
dred.  All  the  costs  and  burdens  of  the  contest  are 
on  the  defendant.  Let  him  be  acquitted  with 
honour,  and  invited  to  dinner  by  the  judge,  he  has 
yet  lost  his  property,  and  the  Gomstock  hiding  be- 

i  For  example,  the  magazine  which  printed  David  Graham 
Phillips'  Susan  Lenox:  Her  Rise  and  Fall  as  a  serial  prefaced 
it  with  a  moral  encomium  by  the  Rev.  Charles  H.  Parkhurst. 
Later,  when  the  novel  appeared  in  book  form,  the  Comstocks 
began  an  action  to  have  it  suppressed,  and  forced  the  publisher 
to  bowdlerize  it. 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     279 

hind  the  warrant  cannot  be  made  to  pay.  In  this 
concealment,  indeed,  lurk  many  sinister  things — 
not  forgetting  personal  enmity  and  business  rivalry. 
The  actual  complainant  is  seldom  uncovered; 
Comstockery,  taking  on  a  semi-judicial  character, 
throws  its  chartered  immunity  around  the  whole 
process.  A  hypothetical  outrage?  By  no  means. 
It  has  been  perpetrated,  in  one  American  city  or 
another,  upon  fully  half  of  the  magazines  of  gen 
eral  circulation  published  today.  Its  possibility 
sticks  in  the  consciousness  of  every  editor  and  pub 
lisher  like  a  recurrent  glycosuria.1 

But  though  the  effects  of  comstockery  are  thus 
abominably  insane  and  irritating,  the  fact  is  not  to 
be  forgotten  that,  after  all,  the  thing  is  no  more  than 
an  effect  itself.  The  fundamental  causes  of  all  the 
grotesque  (and  often  half -fabulous)  phenomena 
flowing  out  of  it  are  to  be  sought  in  the  habits  of 
mind  of  the  American  people.  They  are,  as  I  have 
shown,  besotted  by  moral  concepts,  a  moral  en 
grossment,  a  delusion  of  moral  infallibility.  In 
their  view  of  the  arts  they  are  still  unable  to  shake 
off  the  na'ive  suspicion  of  the  Fathers.2  A  work  of 

1  An  account  of  a  typical  prosecution,  arbitrary,  unintelligent 
and  disingenuous,  is  to  be  found  in  Sumner  and  Indecency,  by 
Frank  Harris,  in  Pearson's  Magazine  for  June,  1917,  p.  556. 

2  For  further  discussions  of  this  point  consult  Art  in  Amer 
ica,  by  Aleister  Crowley,  The  English  Review,  Nov.,  1913;  Life, 


280  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

the  imagination  can  justify  itself,  in  their  sight, 
only  if  it  show  a  moral  purpose,  and  that  purpose 
must  be  obvious  and  unmistakable.  Even  in  their 
slow  progress  toward  a  revolt  against  the  ancestral 
Philistinism,  they  cling  to  this  ethical  bemusement: 
a  new  gallery  of  pictures  is  welcomed  as  "improv 
ing,"  to  hear  Beethoven  "makes  one  better."  Any 
questioning  of  the  moral  ideas  that  prevail — the 
principal  business,  it  must  be  plain,  of  the  novelist, 
the  serious  dramatist,  the  professed  inquirer  into 
human  motives  and  acts — is  received  with  the  ut 
most  hostility.  To  attempt  such  an  enterprise  is  to 
disturb  the  peace — and  the  disturber  of  the  peace, 
in  the  national  view,  quickly  passes  over  into  the 
downright  criminal. 

These  symptoms,  it  seems  to  me,  are  only  partly 
racial,  despite  the  persistent  survival  of  that  third- 
rate  English  strain  which  shows  itself  so  ingen 
uously  in  the  colonial  spirit,  the  sense  of  infe 
riority,  the  frank  craving  for  praise  from  home. 
The  race,  in  truth,  grows  mongrel,  and  the  protest 
against  that  mongrelism  only  serves  to  drive  in  the 
fact.  But  a  mongrel  race  is  necessarily  a  race  still 
in  the  stage  of  reaching  out  for  culture;  it  has  not 

Art  and  America,  by  Theodore  Dreiser,  The  Seven  Arts,  Feb., 
1917;  and  The  American;  His  Ideas  of  Beauty,  by  H.  L. 
Mencken,  The  Smart  Set,  Sept.,  1913. 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     281 

yet  formulated  defensible  standards;  it  must  needs 
rest  heavily  upon  the  superstitions  that  go  with 
inferiority.  The  Reformation  brought  Scotland 
among  the  civilized  nations,  but  it  took  Scotland  a 
century  and  a  half  to  live  down  the  Reformation.1 
Dogmatism,  conformity,  Philistinism,  the  fear  of 
rebels,  the  crusading  spirit;  these  are  the  marks  of 
an  upstart  people,  uncertain  of  their  rank  in  the 
world  and  even  of  their  direction.2  A  cultured  Eu 
ropean,  reading  a  typical  American  critical  journal, 
must  needs  conceive  the  United  States,  says  H.  G. 
Wells,  as  "a  vain,  garrulous  and  prosperous  female 
of  uncertain  age  and  still  more  uncertain  temper, 
with  unfounded  pretensions  to  intellectuality  and 
an  ideal  of  refinement  of  the  most  negative  descrip 
tion  ...  the  Aunt  Errant  of  Christendom." 3 
There  is  always  that  blushful  shyness,  that  timorous 
uncertainty,  broken  by  sudden  rages,  sudden  enun 
ciations  of  impeccable  doctrine,  sudden  runnings 
amuck.  Formalism  is  the  hall-mark  of  the  na 
tional  culture,  and  sins  against  the  one  are  sins 
against  the  other.  The  American  is  school-mas 
tered  out  of  gusto,  out  of  joy,  out  of  innocence. 

1  Vide  The  Cambridge  History  of  English  Literature,  vol. 
XI,  p.  225. 

2  The  point  is  discussed  by  H.  V.  Routh  in  The  Cambridge 
History  of  English  Literature,  vol.  XI,  p.  290. 

sin  Boon;  New  York,  George  H.  Doran  Co.,  1915. 


282  A  BOOK  OF  PREFACES 

He  can  never  fathom  William  Blake's  notion  that 
"the  lust  of  the  goat  is  also  to  the  glory  of  God." 
He  must  be  correct,  or,  in  his  own  phrase,  he  must 
bust. 

Via  trita  est  tutissima.  The  new  generation, 
urged  to  curiosity  and  rebellion  by  its  mounting 
sap,  is  rigorously  restrained,  regimented,  policed. 
The  ideal  is  vacuity,  guilelessness,  imbecility. 
"We  are  looking  at  this  particular  book,"  said 
Comstock's  successor  of  "The  'Genius,'  "  "from  the 
standpoint  of  its  harmful  effect  on  female  readers 
of  immature  mind."  To  be  curious  is  to  be  lewd ; 
to  know  is  to  yield  to  fornication.  Here  we  have 
the  mediaeval  doctrine  still  on  its  legs:  a  chance 
word  may  arouse  "a  libidinous  passion"  in  the 
mind  of  a  "modest"  woman.  Not  only  youth  must 
be  safeguarded,  but  also  the  "female,"  the  un 
trustworthy  one,  the  temptress.  "Modest,"  is  a 
euphemism;  it  takes  laws  to  keep  her  "pure."  The 
"locks  of  chastity"  rust  in  the  Cluny  Museum;  in 
place  of  them  we  have  comstockery.  .  .  . 

But,  as  I  have  said  in  hymning  Huneker,  there  is 
yet  the  munyonic  consolation.  Time  is  a  great 
legalizer,  even  in  the  field  of  morals.  We  have  yet 
no  delivery,  but  we  have  at  least  the  beginnings  of 
a  revolt,  or,  at  all  events,  of  a  protest.  We  have 
i  In  a  letter  to  Felix  Shay,  Nov.  24,  1916. 


PURITANISM  A  LITERARY  FORCE     283 

already  reached,  in  Howells,  our  Hannah  More;  in 
Clemens,  our  Swift;  in  Henry  James,  our  Horace 
Walpole;  in  Woodberry,  Robinson  et  al.,  our  Cow- 
pers,  Southeys  and  Crabbes;  perhaps  we  might 
even  make  a  composite  and  call  it  our  Johnson. 
We  are  sweating  through  our  Eighteenth  Century, 
our  era  of  sentiment,  our  spiritual  measles. 
Maybe  a  new  day  is  not  quite  so  far  off  as  it  seems 
to  be,  and  with  it  we  may  get  our  Hardy,  our  Con 
rad,  our  Swinburne,  our  Thoma,  our  Moore,  our 
Meredith  and  our  Synge. 


THE    END 


INDEX 


Abolitionists,  213,  231 
Agnosticism,  14,  17 
Alden,  W.  L.,  on  Conrad,  53 
"Almayer's  Folly,"  12,  16,  37, 

42,  47,  51,  52,  56,  59 
American  Bible  Society,  239 
American  mind,  25,  197-8,  207 

et  seq. 

"Amy  Foster,"  36 
Anglo-Saxon    point    of    view, 

20-3 
Animal  behaviour,  theory  of, 

135 
"Anthony  Comstock,  Fighter," 

354  n,  255  et  seq. 
Anti-Saloon    League,    244    et 

seq.,  249-50 
Art    Students*    League    raid, 

269 

Balzac,  H.  de,  15,  73,  76,  113, 

155,  202,  260 
"Banks  of  the  Wabash,  The," 

106 

Beauty,  Dreiser  on,  126 
Benedict,  Judge  Chas.  L.,  and 

Comstockery,  267  n. 
Bennett,  Arnold,  19,  26,  32,  48, 

62,  78,  104,  137,  142,  143 
Bible,  declared  obscene,  261-2 
Bierce,     Ambrose,     146,    202, 

216,  224 

"Blue  Sphere,  The,"  126 
Bohemian  Magazine,  104 
Bourne,  Randolph,  147  n,  158, 

237  n. 
Boynton,  H.  W.,  134,  158 

285 


British  mind,  25 
Brooks,  Van  Wyck,  134 
Butler,  Edward  Malia,  116  et 
seq.,  119 

Calvinism,  14,  139,  164,  197  et 
seq. 

Catholicism,  Dreiser's,  75 

Censorship,  theatre,  241 ;  mov 
ing  picture,  242,  274 

Century  Magazine,  143,  221 

"Chance,"  37,  48,  56,  60 

Chicago  Vice  Commission,  re 
port  of,  269 

"Children  of  the  Sea,"  see 
"Nigger  of  the  Narcissus, 
The" 

"Chopin:  the  Man  and  His 
Music,"  166,  169  et  seq. 

Clemens,  S.  L.,  see  Twain, 
Mark 

Clifford,  Hugh,  52,  54,  59 

Comstock,  Anthony,  253  et  seq. 

Comstock  Postal  Acts  of  1873, 
241,  257  et  seq. 

Comstocks,  attack  on  Dreiser, 
101-2,  140  et  seq. 

Conrad,  Joseph,  birth  and  par 
entage,  20;  first  book,  51; 
early  success,  53;  pensioned, 
54;  his  books  as  bibelots, 
56;  style,  36  et  seq.;  mate 
rials,  40  et  seq.;  irony,  13, 
18;  ethical  agnosticism,  17, 
29-32;  on  women,  33-5; 
statement  of  his  task,  29; 
contrasted  with  other  au- 


286 


INDEX 


thors,    30,    45,   48-9,    88    et 

seq.,  96 
Cotvperivood,   Frank,    79,   114 

et  seq.,  135,  201 
Criticism  in  America,  153  et 

seq.,  191-2 
Curie,  Richard,  60 

Delineator,  104 

de  Pachmann,  Vladimir,  171, 
178 

Dewey,  John,  152-3 

Dime  novels,  Dreiser  as  ed 
itor  of,  103 

Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.,  70, 
100-1,  102 

Drama  League  of  America, 
180,  182 

Dreiser,  Theodore,  birth  and 
parentage,  76-7,  106;  early 
influences,  68  et  seq.;  career 
in  journalism,  98-105;  first 
book,  70,  98  et  seq.;  dates 
of  books,  100,  105;  plays, 
105,  125-6;  travel  books, 
105,  127-131;  style,  79  et 
seq.,  113;  mysticism,  12;  ag 
nosticism,  88  et  seq.,  147;  his 
novels  criticized,  106  et 
seq.;  academic  attitude  to 
ward,  131  et  seq.;  attacked 
by  Comstocks,  139  et  seq.; 
contrasted  with  Conrad,  34, 
88  et  seq. 

Dresser,  Paul,  106,  130 

"Egoists,"  179,  181 

"End  of  the  Tether,  The,"  47 

"Falk,"  16,  36,  39,  47,  59,  64 
Fiction,  English,  18,  19 


"Financier,  The,"  81,  86,  101, 
105,  107,  114,  122,  138 

Flaubert,  Gustave,  73,  84,  136, 
181 

Follett,  Wilson,  11,  13,  17,  60 

Garnett,  Edward,  52 
"'Genius/  The,"  80-1,  83,  86, 

87,   93,    105,    107,   115,   122, 

125,  139,  226,  270,  273,  282 
Gerhardt,  Jennie,  109-10,  119, 

137 
Gerhardt,  Jennie's  father,  96, 

117 

German  mind,  25 
"Girl  in  the  Coffin,  The,"  125 
Good  Templars,  228-30 
Goorall,  Tanko,  12 
Great  Awakening  of  1734,  227 
Greenwich   Village,    124,    145, 

224 

"Hand   of   the   Potter,   The," 

105 

Hanson,  Minnie,  85 
Hardy,    Thomas,    16,    62,    69, 

71,  72,  76,  260 
Harper  &  Bros.,  100-2,  105 
Harvard,  163,  169,  177 
"Heart  of  Darkness,"  35,  36, 

41,  64 

Herrenmoral,  236 
H eyst,  12,  34,  59 
"Hoosier  Holiday,  A,"  76,  86, 

88,  92,  105,  106,  125,  127  et 

seq. 

Hope,  Dreiser  on,  126 
Howells,  W.  D.,  28,  58,  74,  76, 

97,  156,  159,  188,  205,  217, 

218,  275,  282 


INDEX 


287 


Hueffer,  Ford  Madox,  53,  54 
Huneker,    James,    birth    and 
parentage,  164;  in  journal 
ism,  167,  183;  as  music  stu 
dent,  166-7;  as  a  critic,  159 
et    seq.,    190-4;    books    on 
music,  168-175;  stories,  188- 
90;  on  Conrad,  59;  his  aims, 
193;  style,  180  et  seq. 
Hurstwood,  99,  108-9 

Ibsen,  Henrik,  15,  23,  24,  40, 

83,  124,  156,  160-1,  162,  182, 

200 
"Iconoclasts,"    169,    170,    179, 

181 

"Inheritors,  The,"  42,  53,  56 
"In  the  Dark,"  126 
"Ivory,  Apes  and  Peacocks," 

59 

James,  Henry,  58,  62,  113,  217, 

218,  283 
"Jennie  Gerhardt,"  16,  71,  76- 

7,  82,  84,  96,  101,  105-9,  111- 

2,  117,  124,  276 
Jesup,  Morris  K.,  257  et  seq. 
Jim,  Lord,  12,  16,  38,  39,  42, 

59 

Jones,  AltJiea,  80-1,  85 
Joseffy,  Rafael,  167,  178 

Kellner,  Leon,  197  et  seq. 
Kultur-Novellen,      Huneker's, 

188  et  seq. 
Kurtz,  12,  16,  34,  38,  39,  59 

Libraries,  Dreiser's   books   in 

American,  143-5  n. 
"Life,  Art  and  America,"  86, 

88,  92,  105 


"Lord  Jim,"  36,  47,  56,  60 
Lord's  Day  Alliance,  242 
Love,  Dreiser  on,  126 

MacWhlrr,  Capt.,  12,  37,  42 

Mann  Act,  241,  251-2,  258 

Marlow,  36,  37 

Meeber,  Carrie,  40,  85,  99,  109 
et  seq.,  126,  137 

"Melomaniacs,"  188  et  seq. 

Men  and  Religions  Forward 
Movement,  239 

Methodism,  139,  197,  277 

"Mezzotints  in  Modern  Music," 
168 

"Mirror  of  the  Sea,  The,"  50, 
56 

"Morals,  Not  Art  or  Litera 
ture,"  253 

Naturalism,  German,  77 
"New  Cosmopolis,"  165,  183  et 

seq. 
Nietzsche,  F.  W.,  15,  29,  90,  93, 

136,  158,  162,  173,  180,  181, 

183,  192,  193 
"Nigger     of^,  the     Narcissus, 

The,"  50,  52,  56 
Norris,  Frank,  15,  70,  71,  100, 

108,  122,  163,  191,  224 
"Nostromo,"  12,  38,  42,  45,  46- 

7,  48,  56 

"Old  Fogy,"  170  et  seq.,  179, 

181 

"Old  Ragpicker,"  125 
"Outcast  of  the  Islands,  An,*' 

Page,  Walter  H.,  102 
"Pathos  of  Distance,  The,"  164 


288 


INDEX 


"Personal  Record,  A,"  37,  51, 

83 

Pilsner,  165,  184-5 
"Plays  of  the  Natural  and  the 

Supernatural,"  105, 125 
Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  73, 151, 152, 

154,  180-1,  189,  214,  221 
"Point  of  Honor,  The,"  42,  47 
Prague,  165,  185-6 
Prohibition,  228-9,  244  et  seq. 
Prudery,  American,  228 

Razumov,  12,  34,  49 
Resignationism,  14 
"Return,  The,"  42 
"Romance,"  56 
Ruiz,  Gaspar,  12 
Russia,    Conrad's   picture   of, 
49-50 

Sea,  Conrad's  pictures  of,  50-1 
"Secret  Agent,  The,"  42,  48, 

59,  60 

"Set  of  Six,  A.,"  56 
"Shadow  Line,  The,"  12,  13,  47 
Shakespeare,    Wm.,    14-5,    65, 

155,  121,  199,  204 

Shaw,   G.   B.,   15,   16,   19,  26, 

121-2,  161,  182,  269 
"Sister  Carrie,"  58,  70,  71,  73, 

81,  84,  95,  97,  98  et  seq.,  105, 

107,  108,  109,  111,  112-3, 117, 

119,  126, 143,  201 
Sklavenmoral,  22,  235 
Slav,  qualities  of,  14 
"Some  Reminiscences,"  37,  56. 

(See  also  "Personal  Record, 

A.") 
Sons  of  Temperance,  228 


Street  &  Smith,  103-4 
Symons,  Arthur,  19,  28-9,  39 

"Tales  of  Unrest,"  52,  56 
"Titan,  The,"  60,  77,  82,  86, 

101,  105,  106,  111,  114,  117 

et  seq.,  129,  138,  201,  275 
Train,  George  Francis,  261-2 
"Traveler  at  Forty,  A.,"  76,  82, 

105,  125,  127 
Truth,  Dreiser  on,  126 
Twain,  Mark,  15,  17,  30,  90, 

131-2,    133,    143,    151,    202, 

203-4,  217,  222 
"Typhoon,"  12,  47,  50,  53 

"Under  Western  Eyes,"  36, 
42,  47,  48,  49,  56,  59 

"Victory,"  13,  33,  42,  48,  55,  56 
"Visionaries,"  188  et  seq. 

Webb  Law,  230,  241,  258 
Wells,  H.  G.,  19,  32,  38,  48,  53, 

62,  135,  142,  144,  281 
Wille  zur  Macht,  the  Puritan, 

237,  246 
Witla,    Eugene,    122    et    seq., 

137,  140  et  seq. 

Young  Men's  Christian  Asso 
ciation,  230,  238,  240,  256 

"Youth,"  12,  13,  37,  41,  48,  53, 
54,  56,  64 

Zola,  Emile,  15-6,  63,  71-2,  76, 
78,  113,  124,  136,  202,  216, 
260 


14  DAY  USE 

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